


ahead in the count

by elisela



Series: southpaw [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Sports, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Getting Together, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Smut, Stackson Brotp, Stiles Stilinski is a Nice Thing, Teacher Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:28:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 50,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisela/pseuds/elisela
Summary: “Yankee fan,” Derek says, laughing when Stiles makes a disgusted face. “The Bronx Bombers, Stiles, you can’t be a New Yorker and—”“Stop talking right now,” Stiles sighs, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I still want to kiss you after that,” he says, pulling Derek in by his coat. “This is making me rethink everything."“I’ll never watch them again,” Derek promises, and Stiles laughs against his mouth.Or: Stiles is a starting pitcher for the NY Mets when he meets and falls in love with Derek. Derek doesn’t know.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Stiles Stilinski & Jackson Whittemore
Series: southpaw [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014576
Comments: 153
Kudos: 988





	1. October

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spinningincircles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinningincircles/gifts), [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/gifts), [letmetellyouaboutmyfeels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/gifts), [blueboxtardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueboxtardis/gifts).



> For the girls who light up my life and also who assured me there was no need for drama and that 50k of shameless, self-indulgent fluff was good.

**mischiefs:** dude what the fuck  
**mischiefs:** what the FUCK  
**mischiefs:** FUEL  
**mischiefs:** harsh man  
**mischiefs:** you fucking hustled me  
**mischiefs:** not cool  
**mischiefs:** next one is mine

Derek bites down on the corner of his tongue to stop from smiling; this is the fifth game they’ve played together, and he’s won every time. This one had been closer than the others—Derek suspects that whoever he’s playing against isn’t used to losing, especially on such easy words, but he learned long ago that having an extensive vocabulary is only part of the game. His opponent has that part covered, but Derek takes better advantage of the board and word placement, which allows him to do things like get 45 points for the word _fuel_ and win the game.

His opponent has been sending him messages since they started playing—complaints about Derek’s score, disbelief at his own losing streak, excuses that his letters suck and it’s not really his fault for losing. Derek hasn’t responded, because he uses Words With Friends simply to destress and not to talk to people, because talking is exhausting and considering he does it all day long, he’s a little over it by the time he gets home—but there’s a part of him that wants to tease back, so he taps the back of his phone for a few seconds with the pad of his finger anxiously before typing quickly into the chat box.

**dhale:** I guess if you’re going in multiples of three, the sixth time's the charm.  
**mischiefs:** you’re alive!!  
**mischiefs:** i thought maybe you were a machine  
**mischiefs:** you’re too good  
**mischiefs:** are you cheating???  
**mischiefs:** scotty says you can cheat at this  
**mischiefs:** I’m not, i swear  
**mischiefs:** some of us have integrity

Derek snorts as the messages roll in one after the other, clicks the box that pops up telling him that mischiefs wants a rematch to accept the new game and writes back quickly as the bell rings, signaling the end of his lunch.

**dhale** : I know. If you were cheating, you would have won by now.

The new game board already has a word stretched down the middle— _vibe_ , for eleven points—and he glances at his letter set before he drops his phone into his open desk drawer, locks it, and pushes his chair back, making it to his classroom door just as his fourth period class trickles in. He greets them with fist bumps and smiles, leaning against the doorframe as they wander in, backpacks hitched up on their shoulders and whispering under their breath about the latest drama at lunch. Their conversations taper off as they get settled into their seats and Derek waits until the bell rings to abandon his spot at the door and wind his way through the tables as he heads to the front of the class, looking over shoulders as his students do their bell work, pushing the game and the best word to play out of his mind until the bell rings again and his planning period starts. 

He doesn’t normally play during the school day, because his students deserve his full attention, but the game is infinitely more interesting than the stack of tests he’s got sitting in front of him still without grades. He makes a deal with himself—two tests for every time he picks up his phone—plays the word _blimp_ for thirty points and pulls the first test in front of him. By the time his planning period is over, they’ve got six words on the board, Derek’s losing 74-87, and mischiefs is crowing about what he calls his inevitable victory.

“Yeah, whatcha gonna be for Halloween?”

Derek sighs and raises an eyebrow, which does nothing to quell the eager look on Dominic’s face. “I meant does anyone have questions about the strategy we’re using before I hand out the exit ticket,” he says, fanning out the stack of papers in his hand. 

“Oh, no, but I still wanna know about your costume,” Dominic says, and several other students start nodding. 

“I haven’t decided,” he says, beginning to pass the papers out. “Might just wear a sweater and call myself Mr. Rogers.” He shakes his head at their blank looks, stretching to drop the rest of the exit tickets at the last table. “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood? You guys missed a pivotal part of childhood,” he says, hopping up to sit on an empty desk near the door and putting his feet on the chair. He watches over them as they work, takes in the kids whose hands fly over the page, the kids who bite their lips as they work, the ones that hunch over and tap their pencils anxiously. 

They finish and pack up quickly, hesitating in front of the baskets he has on the back counter; he’s pleased to see that most of them gravitate towards the yellow and green basket, a sign that they believe they understand the concept. 

“You should be like, a secret agent,” Lola says, shifting her messenger bag to her hip as she stands at the door. “That’s just a suit and some sunglasses.”

“Mr. Boyd is gonna be a Yankee,” Santiago says when he joins them. “Again.”

“Man, my sister said he’s Andy Pettitte every year,” Casey says. “Dude, Mr. Hale, you should go as Posada, that’d be lit. Like, ultimate battery mates.”

Derek shrugs as the bell rings and doesn’t bother replying as his class files out, heading to their homeroom one final time before the day is over. He carries the exit tickets over to his desk and flips through them, scanning the answers quickly and setting a few aside that make no sense; those get added to the stack of homework his sixth grade classes turned in. He piles it all on top of the seventh grade tests he didn’t finish grading during his planning period, shoves everything into his backpack and wishes again that he hadn’t avoided doing it for so long. He’s out the door by the time school is dismissed, backpack hanging off one shoulder as he walks down the hallway, keeping an eye on the students as they push past each other to the door. 

Boyd falls into step with him a few doors down from the library; Erica’s already at a table as they step inside and Derek greets her with a small smile, dropping his bag onto the back of his chair and sliding into it, accepting the fun-size pack of Skittles she slides across the table. 

“A month in and I still have kids who figure they’ll just make up their own prompts rather than do what’s assigned,” Boyd says, tossing a paper in front of Derek. There’s a post-it stuck to the front that reads: _I didn’t like Percy Jackson so I wrote this about Harry Potter instead_.

“They’re not wrong,” Erica says, dodging the candy that Boyd throws at her. “Stop assigning boring books.”

Derek rolls his eyes, tunes their yearly argument out and slides his phone out of his pocket after he glances at the clock. In theory, staff meetings are supposed to start five minutes after the final bell; in reality, the kids are still meandering their way down the hallways and loitering in the courtyard, so Derek figures he has a few minutes. He’s not surprised that the only notifications are from Words With Friends—everyone who texts him outside his family is sitting at the table with him, and he knows Laura has surgeries scheduled today, so he’s not expecting to hear from her. 

**mischiefs:** that’s not a word  
**mischiefs:** is dictionary-writer your job or something dude?  
**mischiefs:** anyway fuck you  
**mischiefs:** “joles”  
**mischiefs:** now I know you’re cheating

“No sudden movements,” Erica whispers from next to him, “but Derek is _smiling_ at his phone so something’s up.”

He moves his hand lower so it can’t be seen by anyone _but_ her, and flips her off. “Just this person I’m playing Words With Friends with,” he says. “They think I’m cheating because I keep beating them.”

“Oh, just explain that you have no life,” Erica says and lets out a sudden huff of air; Derek sees Boyd tucking his elbow back in towards his side from the corner of his eye and shakes his head. He hits the swap button on his tiles a few times, watching them rearrange themselves until he realizes he has a few options for a seven-letter word, he just needs a place on the board for them. It only takes a moment to find one that hits a triple-word square and he can’t help but feel a smug sense of satisfaction when he places them all and hits play.

**dhale** : I’m a math teacher. Middle school. I don’t think I even have a dictionary in my classroom.

He doesn’t say that he actually has no clue what the definition of joles is, because then he’d have to admit that at least half the time he just moves letters around randomly on his screen until he finds something that gets him enough points. 

**mischiefs:** oh dude that’s awesome, I love math  
**mischiefs:** wow that’s lame to say sorry  
**mischiefs:** do kids still ask when they’re gonna use math?  
**dhale:** They stop when I start asking them to give me an example of how they could use it in different careers or life situations.  
**mischiefs:** evil  
**mischiefs:** but genius  
**mischiefs:** i like it  
**mischiefs:** but c’mon dude a seven letter word??  
**mischiefs:** you gotta give me a break  
**mischiefs:** shit, i didn’t even get close to you and i got a triple word space!

Derek goes back to the game board and plays _aww_ for 27 points, locks his phone, and shoves it back in his pocket just as Harris, their associate principal, clears his throat from the front of the room. “We’re going to start off with a quick slideshow to get us all caught up on today’s slang,” he says, and Derek looks up at the projector screen in time to see the words “School is GOAT” followed by two fire emojis scroll across.

Jesus.

“Using our time wisely,” Boyd mutters. “Twenty bucks says we don’t hear any of these phrases from the kids all year.”

By the time the staff meeting is over and Erica has spent fifteen minutes trying to make weekend plans with him—after listening to her reeling off a list of headache inducing ideas he’d circled back to the first offer and had begrudgingly agreed to meet her and Boyd at a bowling alley for Midnight Madness—Derek can’t stand the idea of sitting in a subway car for the forty minutes it takes to get home, so he starts walking. It’s an unusually warm day for October, sunny and mid-seventy, and with Laura on an overnight shift he doesn’t have any reason to get there quickly. 

Derek’s always loved Brooklyn—he’d grown up there, gone to school there, and stayed in New York for college when his sisters had left the state. His entire life has been lived within the confines of the city, and it comforts him to walk past the same places he’s known since he was a child, to be able to look at a building and remember all the different places housed there.

**mischiefs:** “aww”  
**mischiefs:** that’s an utterance, not a word  
**mischiefs:** i can’t believe you

He detours on his route home and stops into one of his favorite coffee shops, messages mischiefs back as he stands in line to order, unable to help the way his mouth turns up into a smile. There hasn’t been a word that Derek has played for four games that his opponent hasn’t messaged about, from _lactose_ to _qi_ , his messages a litany of complaints about Derek’s playing skills interspersed with posing random questions that never seem to be answered ( _is it racist to use Indian summer to describe the weather?_ and _did you know there used to be purple M &Ms??_) and observations about various forms of media ( _dude I’m watching Tremors, they should remake this shit_ ).

Coffee in hand, he drops his backpack on the table, sliding tiles onto the board with his thumb as he plays the word _vapid_ before switching back to the chat.

**dhale:** Is this enough of a word for you?  
**mischiefs:** i can feel your smugness from here  
**mischiefs:** dude should i get tacos or sushi for lunch?  
**dhale:** Sushi, as long as you’re not getting it from a gas station.  
**mischiefs:** i’m offended  
**mischiefs:** i would never  
**mischiefs:** i’m in san francisco right now, scotty and i are here for the week with our friends  
**mischiefs:** scott’s my best friend, my brother from another mother  
**mischiefs:** and father  
**mischiefs:** but that doesn’t rhyme  
**mischiefs:** we keep trying to set my dad and his mom up but they’re stubbornly resistant  
**mischiefs:** all this is to say that there’s awesome sushi here so I’ll go with that

Derek writes back occasionally as he grades; it’s easy to fall into a rhythm with the homework and by the time he’s finished the sun is setting on Prospect Park. He orders a panini when he finishes grading packets, then stretches out at the table and adds _goaty_ to the board, already imagining mischiefs reaction. 

**mischiefs:** you’re single handedly ruining my week  
**mischiefs:** i hope you’re happy  
**mischiefs:** there’s no way i’ll enjoy making my friends visit alcatraz for the 7th time now  
**mischiefs:** you ever been?  
**dhale:** I’ve never been to the west coast. My sister went to college at Stanford for two years before she transferred to UC but I didn’t get a chance to visit her.

He eats slowly as they chat—he only responds to a handful of messages and plays words throughout, but it’s amusing, the way his opponent sends him a barrage of messages, asks a question, and then pivots to something else completely or stops in the middle of a thought to comment on Derek’s word and picks up the thread again after a detour through other topics. The conversation is more like the ones he has with his students than any of his family or friends, which is—nice, actually. He loves them all, but Laura trends towards being overbearing and bossy, the same dynamic they had as children, Cora talks mostly about herself and makes fun of Derek’s lack of a social life, Erica spends time trying to psychoanalyze him and pushing him into things she thinks he needs, and Boyd is mostly content to just _be_ and not talk at all.

Derek loves the interactions he has with his kids—meandering, lazy conversations that drift through the days, weeks, circle around and back with details and layers being added in, stories told and retold as they get to know each other. Their conversations are honest, spontaneous, no ulterior motives except listening and being heard, something to bond them to one another. 

Darkness has fully settled over the city by the time he returns his now-graded papers to his backpack, clears his plate and leaves the coffeeshop, cutting through the park on a well-worn, familiar path home. The house he shares with Laura and her husband is dark except for the single light shining through her upstairs window; he leaves the main floor untouched and heads straight downstairs to his space, hanging up his backpack in the closet off the stairs and turning on the lamps that sit on either side of the couch before grabbing his book off the coffee table and laying down.

**mischiefs:** i’m going to win the next one  
**dhale:** Sure you will.  
**mischiefs:** wow  
**mischiefs:** thanks for the vote of confidence  
**dhale:** Stop playing words like red and maybe you’ll have a chance.  
**mischiefs:** you’re the one that played axe!  
**dhale:** x is worth 8 points, and I put it on a triple letter space.  
**mischiefs:** i really hate you.  
**mischiefs:** again?  
**dhale:** Of course.


	2. November

**mischiefs:** dude northern california is cold in november  
 **dhale:** I didn’t say it wasn’t, I said it couldn’t be nearly as cold as Chicago.  
 **mischiefs:** oh so this is a competition now??  
 **dhale:** Well the game certainly isn’t.  
 **mischiefs:** if that’s your idea of trash talk  
 **mischiefs:** it sucks  
 **mischiefs:** loser  
 **dhale:** We’re 82-6 and you’re calling me the loser?  
 **mischiefs:** you’re cheating and i’ll prove it  
 **mischiefs:** gonna fly my ass to chicago and make you play right next to me  
 **mischiefs:** ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

Derek snorts out a laughs—he knew as soon as he played _whimsied_ for 95 points that mischiefs would take offense—then tenses when his mom looks over his shoulder, hands pressed firmly against his arms as she leans over the back of the couch. 

“Is that Boyd, sweetheart? How’s he doing?”

He resists the urge to lock the phone and put it away, because he’s twenty-nine and it doesn’t matter if his mom sees he’s talking to someone on the internet. “He’s doing fine, but it’s not Boyd,” he says, tipping his head back to look at her. “It’s just a game,” he says. “You can talk with the people you play.”

“Aww, here we thought you might have made a second friend,” Cora says, and Derek drops his chin back down to glare across the room at her. “Shame.”

The sigh that Talia lets out behind him is long-suffering. “It’s like no time has passed when it comes to the two of you. Cora, don’t antagonize your brother, you know he values the quality of his friendships over the quantity.”

“Fancy way of saying you’re a loner,” Cora says, kicking her feet up onto the coffee table that’s situated between them. Derek, frankly, agrees—he knows he doesn’t have a lot of friends, and he’s fine with that—it’s his family that struggles to accept that he’s happy enough being on his own. 

Still—

**mischiefs:** will you judge me if i resign  
 **mischiefs:** you’re 178 points ahead and that’s not fair  
 **dhale:** Absolutely.  
 **mischiefs:** but dude i have three fucking e’s, two o’s, u, and one r  
 **mischiefs:** A SINGLE CONSONANT dude  
 **mischiefs:** that’s not what you want to win against, is it?  
 **mischiefs:** feels like a cheap win to me  
 **mischiefs:** i’m just sayin i wouldn’t want to sully my win streak like that

“Are you both ready to go?”

Derek looks up at her again, frowning. “I got in an hour ago, Mom, my suitcase has been by the door since we got here.”

“I’ll just borrow stuff from Derek if I need it,” Cora says. “Hope you have good moisturizer, Der.”

“Oh, don’t start,” Talia says. She squeezes Derek’s arms once and lets go; he hears her heels click against the floor as she walks towards the kitchen. “Cora, please go make sure you have everything you need. We’re not making the drive to town because you realized you forgot your toothbrush and Derek rightfully won’t share with you.”

He sticks his tongue out at her as she flops off her couch, dodges the pillow she flings in his direction, and looks back down at his phone. Somehow, he doubts that his Mom or Laura would consider talking to someone exclusively through a gaming app a friendship, but it feels like one to him. They talk every day, and even if it’s not about anything really personal or deep, he looks forward to it; there’s a certain comfort in knowing that when he wakes up he’ll have new notifications, the thrill of being in the thoughts of another person, the anticipation of waiting for a message.

**dhale:** It’s Derek.  
 **dhale:** Unless you wanted to keep calling me dude, but I’m not really a fan of that.  
 **mischiefs:** derek!!  
 **mischiefs:** i’ve totally been calling you dale to my friends, but like, duh-ale  
 **mischiefs:** scott thinks i’m a moron and said there was no way your name was dale so now i guess i have to tell him he was right  
 **dhale:** You can keep pretending it is if you need to save face.  
 **mischiefs:** ha! he’s never right so i’ll give him this one  
 **mischiefs:** i’m generous like that

The game ends two turns later, he starts the rematch right away, and before he can think of a polite way to ask for mischiefs’ name, the chat notification pops up.

**mischiefs:** okay so i called you dale  
 **mischiefs:** what have you been calling me?  
 **dhale:** Your username.  
 **mischiefs:** so i’m gonna buy you some creativity for christmas  
 **mischiefs:** just humor me and guess what my name is  
 **mischiefs:** one good guess and i’ll tell you  
 **dhale:** George.  
 **mischiefs:** extremely far off, but interesting  
 **mischiefs:** is it because i’m like royalty to you?  
 **dhale:** Mischief reminds me of Harry Potter, and between the names Fred and George, I would hope your parents would go with George.  
 **mischiefs:** aww d, i think i like that better than the royalty!  
 **mischiefs:** but no, my name’s stiles  
 **dhale:** Hi, Stiles.

God, Cora’s right, he’s such a loser. He locks the phone and lets it drop down next to him on the couch, rolling his neck from side to side, trying to relieve the tension that always arises from flying and being around his family. Not that he doesn’t love them, because he does more than anything, but the first day is always rough. He and Cora fall into bickering more often than not, his Dad always brings up PhD programs and how Derek would be well-suited to teaching university students, and his Mom—she never says anything, really, but he catches the sad looks, the gentle suggestions that he get out and meet people. He’s not sure if it will be better or worse without Laura; he can’t remember a time they haven’t all spent Thanksgiving up at the cabin, but Laura had taken the opportunity to spend time in Turkey with her husband, William, who was in the ninth month of his Doctors Without Borders contract. 

The tapping of Talia’s nails against the kitchen island brings his attention back and he stands up, stretching. “Need anything?”

“No, your dad should be back soon and then we can go,” she says, resting her hand on top of his briefly after he joins her, bracing his arms against the island. “How have you been, sweetheart, really?”

“Good,” he says, “Mom, really, it’s been good. My kids are great, Laura hasn’t been around much lately but I’ve been spending time with Erica and Boyd, everything is good.”

He holds her gaze despite the prickle of discomfort that creeps up his spine. She worries about him, he knows that, but he hates being forced to defend his life because it never really changes—Derek’s got his routines and likes having time to himself, and as the only introvert in a family full of people who love surrounding themselves with others, he has a hard time convincing them that he truly is content. 

“I just don’t want you to be alone,” she says finally, and Derek sighs. “No, listen—Laura won’t stick around New York forever, and now that your dad is retiring we won’t be there full-time, either. And I know you say you’re fine now, Derek—”

“I say I’m fine because I am,” he says. “Meet someone, don’t meet someone, I’m happy either way—”

“I don’t want you to just keep locking yourself in your house because of what happened with Kate,” Talie continues, and Derek closes his eyes. Every year he hopes it won’t come up, that they’ll let it go just once, and every year he’s disappointed.

“You don’t worry about Cora being single,” he says.

“No, I’m worried that Cora runs herself into the ground because she doesn’t understand the meaning of work-life balance,” Talia says. “Just—put yourself out there, Derek. Just try.” He nods, because it’s the easiest way to get out of the conversation, and she smiles at him and pats his hand again just as the front door opens and his Dad walks in.

“Tires are taken care of,” he announces, grabbing Derek’s suitcase with one hand and reaching for the hat on the entryway table with the other. “Kids! Let’s go, we’ve got six hours ahead of us.”

**dhale:** I won’t be around for the next few days.  
 **mischiefs:** :( :(  
 **mischiefs:** what am i supposed to do without you?  
 **mischiefs:** who will i lose to now??  
 **dhale:** Everybody else who challenges you?  
 **mischiefs:** ouch  
 **mischiefs:** like a dagger to the heart, derek  
 **mischiefs:** visiting family? in-laws? girlfriend? boyfriend? weird neighbor who always watches you from the window?  
 **dhale:** My family spends Thanksgiving at our cabin in Wisconsin. There’s no cell service up there unless we go into town, which my parents try to avoid.  
 **mischiefs:** my sincere condolences  
 **mischiefs:** what the hell do you even do with no cell service? watch movies?  
 **dhale:** We watch a Christmas movie every night but mostly read and ski. Have you ever been cross country skiing? You’re worn out at the end of the day, don’t really want to do anything else.  
 **mischiefs:** i’m getting the idea that you like this and i’m honestly horrified  
 **mischiefs:** that sounds like a nightmare  
 **dhale:** You can’t entertain yourself without your phone?  
 **mischiefs:** no phone means no you kicking my ass at this game, so no, not really  
 **dhale:** Maybe playing other people for a few days will get you enough practice to beat me.  
 **mischiefs:** no one compares to you, derek

“Some friend,” Cora whispers in his ear over the back of the booth and he jumps, feels his face flush as he locks the phone and sets it down as she slides into the seat next to him. “No one compares to you, Derek? Does this person even know you?”

“He likes to joke,” Derek says, poking his straw into his milkshake. “Don’t make it into something it’s not.”

“You have a _crush_ ,” she sing-songs, and he elbows her in the ribs. “You’re all bashful and you’ve spent the last two hours smiling and texting away—don’t deny it Derek, god, it’s fine to have a crush on someone. You really bum me out sometimes, bro.”

“I don’t even know him,” he protests half-heartedly.

Cora reaches over and swipes a french fry from his plate, dragging it through ketchup before popping it into her mouth. “Doesn’t mean you can’t have a crush on him. It’s just like meeting someone through a dating app, you know?”

“It’s nothing like that, we’re playing a game.”

“Uh huh, and in-between turns you’re sending dozens of messages and he’s sweet-talking you,” Cora says. The door of the diner opens and a cold blast of air comes through; when she shivers next to him, he lifts his arm and lets her lean in, pillowing her head on his shoulder. Cora’s always softer when Laura isn’t around, doesn’t need to fight for attention, doesn’t need to be the loudest one in the room. 

His phone buzzes with a new message from Stiles and he reaches towards it without thinking, shakes his head when he feels Cora snort against his sweater. “Shut up,” he says. “I don’t even know him.”

“Okay,” she says, “but it’s not anything to be embarrassed about. People like being wanted, they like it when they know someone is thinking about them and wants to talk to them. I don’t know why you’re fighting human nature, Der.”

**mischiefs:** so how long do i have before you leave me?

“I’m not sure if it counts as a crush if I don’t know what he looks like, or anything about his life at all,” Derek says. “I just—I like getting messages. That’s all.”

Cora sighs. “I will never understand why everyone thinks you’re smarter than me,” she says, and ignores his protest because he’s pretty sure that exactly no one thinks that. “You don’t just like getting _messages_ , Derek, you like getting messages from him. Be honest with yourself—if it were Erica or Boyd messaging you, would you constantly be checking your phone? No. You like this guy flirting with you— _yes_ it’s flirting, don’t argue—and you like flirting back in your own stilted weirdo way. So just enjoy it, whatever. It can be or not be anything you want.”

“How very Hamlet of you,” he says, and she elbows him in the stomach. 

**dhale:** Maybe two hours? We’re on the way there right now. My parents are visiting some friends while Cora and I have lunch.  
 **mischiefs:** cora your so?  
 **mischiefs:** hold up two hours??  
 **mischiefs:** derek :(  
 **mischiefs:** that’s hardly any warning!

Derek’s laying in bed with a book in hand when Cora comes bursting through the door later that night. “Come on, loser,” she says, throwing a hat at him, “it’s snowing. Let’s go for a walk.”

“It’s almost midnight,” he says, but he puts the book down and flips the covers back because once Cora makes up her mind about something there’s very little he can do to change it. She’s already dressed for the weather, bundled up in her coat, scarf wrapped around her neck, and he motions for her to leave the room. “Go write a note for mom and dad.”

“So practical,” she teases as she leaves.

“So uninterested in dying of exposure because no one knew where we went,” he shoots back. It doesn’t take long to get dressed and by the time he takes his coat out of the closet, Cora is sticking a sheet of notebook paper to the refrigerator: _Walked to the lake to trade Derek for a fish. 11:45pm._ “Clever,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Glad I’m worth a whole fish to you.”

“It’d be a big fish,” she assures him, slipping her arm through his after he closes the front door behind them. “It’s weird not having Laura here.”

He shrugs. It’s not so different for him; he sees Laura plenty, but both of his sisters keep busy, and the only time they get together is for holidays. “You’ll see her at Christmas.”

“Yeah, but it’s different,” Cora says. “Everyone will be in the city, Mom and Dad will have a bunch of plans that we won’t want to do, you’ll glare at everyone, Laura will boss us all around, and I will be the picture of perfection as usual.”

“Right,” he says, smiling. “I’m sure there will be no dramatics from you.”

“Not planning on any,” she says, looking over at him and grinning. The moonlight falls soft around them, and the snow that falls onto her dark hair glitters as she moves. “This is just nicer, you know? Don’t bother pretending otherwise, we both know you like the seclusion.”

“That’s not a secret,” he says, “but it surprises me that you agree with me for once.”

“Don’t get used to it.” She hums for a moment, then says, “tell me what you like about him—your internet boyfriend. What draws you to him?”

He frowns, turning them towards the left fork in the path to the lake. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Yes,” she says. “Come on, Der, it’s been a long time since you’ve been interested in someone, I want to know about him.”

He groans, bringing up his free hand to rub the bridge of his nose and tug his hat further down on his ears. It’s Cora’s attempt at bonding, and he gets it, but it’s frustrating that she pushes when he knows this won’t go anywhere, this little flirtation he has with someone who lives across the country. Gushing over Stiles will only make him want things he can’t have, and as much as he hates to admit it, there’s no one he’s been interested in since Kate. He’s quiet for a long while and once they’re halfway around the lake, Cora nudges him and he sighs. “He lives in California, he dressed up as Elsa from Frozen for Halloween—his best friend was Anna—and he’s sent me good morning messages every day for the last two weeks.”

**mischiefs:** good morning, derek!  
 **mischiefs:** we’re starting thanksgiving prep today   
**mischiefs:** and by we i mean me because my friends are spoiled  
 **mischiefs:** good morning! happy thanksgiving!  
 **mischiefs:** i’m thankful that you were won over by my charming personality early on  
 **mischiefs:** i like talking to you   
**mischiefs:** morning, derek, i can’t believe i forgot to ask when you were back in civilization because i’m getting bored over here  
 **mischiefs:** good morning, sucks for you but i just memorized fifty-eight words that use the letters q, x, and z and i am gonna destroy you now  
 **mischiefs:** good morning, i’m working on j words today  
 **mischiefs:** i’d say good morning but you’re still not around so  
 **dhale:** Good morning, Stiles.  
 **mischiefs:** DEREK   
**mischiefs:** thank GOD dude how was your trip?


	3. Off Season

“Did you know the median salary for position players is $2.8 million? Pitchers come in at $5.2 million, so I’m telling you, it’s a valid ask.”

“For the _last time_ , Stiles,” Lydia says—he hears her breathe in through her nose over the phone—“we are _not_ asking for ‘double whatever Jackson gets’.”

He shrugs, even though she can’t see him, and falls over on his side, sliding until he’s stretched out along the couch. “Triple, then.”

“You are the bane of my entire existence,” she hisses, and the call ends.

“You are the bane of my entire existence,” he mimics, screwing up his face at the screen and switching over to Words With Friends.

**mischiefs:** are your friends also the most annoying people on the planet?  
 **mischiefs:** or is this just my cross to bear  
 **dhale:** Friends, no. Sisters—yes.   
**dhale:** What are they doing?

He starts to type out Lydia’s name, then stops, deletes it and lets the cursor blink at him as he blows out a breath. What’s he supposed to say? _Oh, my agent is pissed because I won’t talk money with her and when I point out that this is one of the many reasons that I pay her to be my agent she calls me the bane of her existence._ Yeah, that’ll go over really well. On the off chance Derek believes he is who he says he is, it’ll get weird, and Stiles—

Well, Stiles really likes Derek. 

**mischiefs:** work stuff, dude, they’re just always on me about it  
 **dhale:** What is it that you do?  
 **mischiefs:** ooh guess  
 **dhale:** Stiles.  
 **mischiefs:** c’mon d just one guess  
 **mischiefs:** we can make it like 20 q’s if you want  
 **dhale:** I don’t want. You said you liked math, so accountant?  
 **mischiefs:** not even close, man  
 **mischiefs:** although technically right now i’m unemployed  
 **mischiefs:** i work on a contract and mine ran out  
 **dhale:** So your friends are annoying because they’re telling you to find a job?  
 **mischiefs:** aww don’t be like that, don’t side with them  
 **dhale:** Play a word, Stiles.

He flips back to the board and frowns, tapping his fingers against the side of his phone. He hasn’t actually been invested in the game for a few weeks now; it’s enjoyable, sure, but Stiles has a tendency of burning bright and quick with things like these, jumping from one thing to the next, sinking in hours and days and weeks only to give it all up at once and move on to the next thing. If it’s not baseball or his family—blood or chosen—it doesn’t last.

He would have given this up a long time ago, except Derek wrote him back, and _kept_ writing him back, and Stiles thinks he’s a little addicted to Derek’s dry, sarcastic wit. It’s starting to turn into a Lydia-esque obsession, which might not be so bad considering Lydia went from his high school (and middle school, and college) love interest to his badass friend and agent who makes him a shit ton of money and somehow manages to also keep his life on track.

All he’s saying is that maybe obsessions aren’t always a bad thing.

Besides, he’s pretty sure that Derek is flirting with him, too. Maybe. He can piece together the clues, at least: single, lives with his sister and her husband, always messages him on the weekdays at 11:35am without fail—which he assumes is when school lets out—so Derek is clearly thinking about him. Derek doesn’t seem to go out often, mentions books he’s reading nightly, talks about his students but not his friends … he just gets the idea that continuing conversations like this is not something Derek usually does.

Ergo, Derek likes him.

He plays the word _boat_ , slides back to the chat and sends an emoji with its tongue sticking out. 

**dhale:** Charming.  
 **mischiefs:** you like it  
 **dhale:** I’m not sure what makes you think that.  
 **mischiefs:** uh, you’re still talking to me?  
 **mischiefs:** you’re kinda obsessed with me, dude  
 **mischiefs:** it’s okay, i get it  
 **mischiefs:** scotty says i’m ridiculously awesome  
 **mischiefs:** i mean he said that to his wife, not to me, but i still know he said it so it counts  
 **mischiefs:** what part of the human face is your favorite?  
 **dhale:** Dimples, I guess.

He opens his contacts and taps on Lydia’s. The phone only rings once before she picks up and he doesn’t wait for her to say anything, just jumps straight in. “Do I have dimples?”

“Do you have a mirror?”

“Lyds! Come on, it’s important.”

“Yes,” she says. “You do, they’re right where Ms. McCall always pokes your cheeks when she’s had more than two glasses of wine. Did you come up with a number for me yet?”

“I want what Isaac gets,” he says, because it may be his third year playing professionally, but it’s still weirdly bizarre that his favorite baseball team is going to _pay him_ millions of dollars to play for them, like Stiles wouldn’t do it for free if asked, and all the research in the world still hasn’t helped him figure out what he thinks his arm is worth. But Isaac is a good person to measure his worth against, he thinks. Isaac is— _technically_ —better, according to statistics, but Isaac also didn’t have a two month meltdown when his father was shot in the line of duty so Stiles doesn’t care much that his lifetime WHIP is slightly higher. He’ll always be the rookie who followed up a no-hitter with being pulled in the second after giving up six runs, but that’s a season and a half behind him and he thinks he’s proven himself reliable since then.

“I can work with that,” Lydia says, clicking her tongue. “Even if it’s not twice what Jackson gets?”

“Triple now,” he reminds her, and she laughs. “You know I’m worth three of him.”

“Whatever you say, Stiles. Why did you ask about your dimples? Too lazy to get off the couch and check yourself?”

“I’d be offended, but I can’t actually remember the last time I got off the couch today,” he says, frowning slightly. “Did I eat lunch? I don’t know what time it is anymore.”

“A sure sign you’ve been in California too long,” she responds. “When are you coming back home?”

“Haven’t booked anything yet,” he says, “but Dad’s working on Christmas and New Year’s so probably sometime between then. Why? You wanna go somewhere instead?”

“Just wondering if you were planning on swinging through Chicago first,” Lydia says, and he groans. “Did you give him your number yet? Tell him that you’ll just so happen to be in Chicago and maybe you two could get together for dinner?”

“No, I haven’t,” he says. Not that he hasn’t considered it—repeatedly—he’s just not sure how well it would go over, and he can’t really figure out a way to offer it without it being weird. 

“Man up, Stilinski,” she says, and hangs up on him for the second time that day.

**dhale:** My sister sent me a meme today that made me think of you.  
 **mischiefs:** lemme see  
 **dhale:** Sorry, I didn’t realize you can’t send pictures on here.  
 **mischiefs:** huh  
 **mischiefs:** you can text it to me  
 **mischiefs:** 707-555-2392  
 **mischiefs:** unless that’s weird you totally can ignore that if you want  
 **mischiefs:** but i wouldn’t be opposed to you texting or calling me


	4. December

Derek’s sitting up on the counter by the time Cora wanders over to him, phone out and on the camera screen, pressing her bony elbow into his thigh to get him to move. “Make a pretty face,” she says, head tilted in towards him; Derek wrinkles his nose and sticks out his tongue as the screen flashes, and Cora laughs. “You and I have very different ideas of the word pretty,” she says, and when she holds the camera up again he—well. 

“I guess it’ll do,” she sighs. “Has it ever occurred to you to try to look good for a photo?”

“Not when it bothers you so much that I don’t,” Derek says. He reaches into the bowl beside him and scoops out another handful of Laura’s homemade caramel popcorn and throws one at his most annoying sister before tipping his head up and dropping the rest into his mouth. 

“Your funeral,” Cora shrugs, picking up the popcorn from where it had landed in her hair and throwing it back at him. She taps away at her phone, mostly hidden in the oversized sleeves of the hoodie she had stolen from him after she’d spilled not one but two glasses of sparkling water on herself after breakfast. “You know what we should do, Der? We should fly out to California. Let’s go meet your boyfriend.”

“Once again,” he says, rolling his eyes, “Stiles is not my boyfriend.”

“But he thinks you’re cute,” she says, grinning. “And he’s—give me— _stop_ —” she says as he reaches out and wretches the phone— _his_ phone, he can see now—from her grasp. “You can be mad all you want but someone has to take charge around here—”

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” he says, heart beating way too rapidly as he swipes up on the lockscreen and opens his messages. “You had no right, Cora, he’s not your—” he stops and blinks at the screen.

A new text comes in as he’s staring—

**Stiles:** scott & me at a party last night 

“He thinks you’re cute,” Cora says again, her tone gentle and soft instead of the unbearable smugness he’s used to. “And I think _he’s_ cute, so if you decide you don’t want him ...”

He throws an entire handful of popcorn at her, eyes still on the screen and the picture that Stiles had sent him. “Don’t finish that sentence,” he says, sliding off the counter and leaving the room before she could say anything else. He makes his way upstairs to his childhood bedroom—still the same as the day he moved out—and sits on the bed after he closes the door, staring down at the messages on his phone. He taps the picture Stiles had sent to enlarge it and takes it in—the amused look and crooked smile, straight line of his body, the veins on the back of his hands, his dimples. 

This slight crush—this _yearning_ he has for Stiles is going to get a lot worse, he thinks, now that he’s seen how absolutely beautiful he is.

He looks at the picture for a long time, wondering what it would feel like to be close to him, to have an arm around Stiles’ shoulder, his fingers curled around Derek’s waist instead of Scott’s. He wonders how tall he is, what he smells like, if his hair sticks up all over naturally or if he spends time perfecting the bedhead look every morning; he wonders about the party they’re at, if he had had fun, if he had been thinking of Derek while meeting new people.

He sits there for so long that he’s not at all surprised when there’s a quiet knock on the door and Laura pokes her head in a moment later. She closes the door behind her and sits next to him, reaching for the hand he’s holding the phone in and turning it towards herself. “Cora told me what she did,” she says. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

He tosses the phone on the bed next to him and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He used to like Christmas, back when Laura wasn’t married and Cora was a teenager, before his parents had three different houses and were rarely around, before he broke up with Kate and she retaliated by burning his house down in the middle of the night. Now it’s just something to get through, an endless parade of people in and out of his parent’s house, events he doesn’t care about, no space or time of his own. “I’m fine,” he says. “She’s trying to help, I’m not mad at her. Just didn’t want to be around everyone. You can go back downstairs.”

“Derek,” Laura starts, “I’m a little—concerned, about all this. I know we’ve both been busy and haven’t had a chance to talk properly about your, uh, friend, but—”

He rests his forehead in his hand and rubs at his temple. She’s just well-meaning, he tells himself; she always has been. Laura’s thought she knows better than he does for his entire life, which he supposes is natural for older siblings, but it’s not like Derek regularly meets people and loses his mind, and considering the amount of therapy he went through after Kate, he thinks he deserves a break from the scrutiny. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he says. “He’s a friend. I’ve never met him, I’ll probably never meet him—”

“And you’re attached anyway,” Laura interrupts, “which is exactly what I’m worried about. This isn’t you, Derek—not that I’m not happy to see you smiling for once, but it’s weird. You’re on your phone constantly, you’ve changed your routines around just to text this guy more often—”

“You’re the one who kept telling me to get out and meet people,” he says, irritated. He’d take Cora’s meddling over Laura picking apart exactly what’s wrong with him any day, and a part of him wishes that she had been the one to come up and check on him instead.

“Yeah, _meet_ them, exactly. That’s my whole point, Der. You have no real clue what this guy is actually like, so what if you really can’t stand him on the off-chance you actually meet him? What if he’s loud all the time and doesn’t understand you need your own space to be quiet? What if he never wants to leave California—we all know you want to stay in New York, could you deal with that? Or what if you just convince yourself that this is more than it really is and you get your heartbroken? I don’t want you to get hurt. When I said get out and meet people, I meant people you actually had a chance with.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he says, ignoring the way his chest aches at her words. There’s no use arguing with her; Laura is the most stubborn of all of them, and he just doesn’t want to deal with it right now. 

“I just worry about you,” she says, patting his thigh before standing up. “A bunch of Mom’s residents just came over so no one will be looking for you for a while if you want to stay up here. Want me to come get you when dinner’s ready?”

God, he hates the residents. It’s always the same—they’re unfailingly polite, deferential, and in awe of Dr. Hale. Laura’s used to dealing with her own so it’s never bothered her, and Cora likes to try to shock them; Derek just feels uncomfortable and put on the spot, like he’s a game show host asking questions to a star-struck audience. “Yeah, thanks,” he says, and when she leaves the room he falls backwards onto the bed, opens his messages back up, and stares at Stiles some more.

The vibration on his chest causes him to open his eyes, and Derek blinks blearily at the room around him, taking a second to gain his bearings before picking up his buzzing phone and looking at the screen. He expects to see one of his sister’s names, letting him know it’s time to come downstairs, but the call screen shows Stiles, and—

Stiles has never called him before.

He also did not put the heart-eye emoji next to Stiles’ name in his contacts, so he should probably scan through his phone to see what other havoc Cora wreaked when she took it upon herself to text Stiles the picture.

The call stops and he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He’s not great with phone calls—he plans out scripts in his head when he makes calls to families, and he’s known a lot of them for years—he’s hardly able to text Stiles sometimes; he never knows what to say, can’t always tell if someone’s joking, doesn’t know how to fill uncomfortable silences or put people at ease. Derek’s good with kids and not much else, which is why he hasn’t called Stiles despite the texts he gets that makes it clear that Stiles would be okay with that.

He’s still trying to figure out how to respond when he gets a text notification, and then another, and by the time he opens their text thread there are half a dozen new texts from Stiles and more are popping up, one right after the other.

**Stiles:** so the thing is is that i maybe kinda panic a little  
**Stiles:** like i have anxiety?  
**Stiles:** and my friends said not to worry because it’s christmas eve and you’re probably busy  
**Stiles:** but you’ve never taken so long to write back  
**Stiles:** and i’m worried i made you mad or offended you by calling you cute  
**Stiles:** i can’t really take that back so if i did, i’m sorry  
**Stiles:** maybe we could forget i ever said it  
**Stiles:** but if you did get offended or mad i’m not sure we could really be friends because like  
**Stiles:** that’s not cool?  
**Stiles:** unless you’re just uncomfortable because i think you’re cute but you don’t  
**Stiles:** you know, feel the same way about me  
**Stiles:** that’s totally fine you know it’s fine

Maybe he’s not the only one who doesn’t know what he’s doing—maybe Stiles shouldn’t be the only one taking a chance. He presses on Stiles’ contact info, hovers his thumb over the phone icon just for a moment, takes a deep breath, and presses down.

Stiles answers right away, but there’s a pause in which Derek can hear him breathe in a little unsteadily before he says, “Derek?”

“I think you’re beautiful,” Derek says, and cringes. “Uh—you don’t have to be anxious about that.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, and then, “fuck, that was a little bit of a meltdown, sorry—”

“It’s okay,” Derek says. “In the interest of honesty, it was Cora that sent you that picture, she’s been a little too involved in my life lately and she’s been—I would have actually smiled if I knew she was going to send it, but it doesn’t matter. Sorry. I’m, uh, not really good at this stuff.”

“At what stuff?”

“Talking,” he says, though knowing that Stiles wasn’t exactly calm about the whole thing did make it easier.

“Oh, that’s fine dude, I’m an expert at talking, I can talk enough for the both of us,” Stiles says, and his voice sounds lighter. “You have time to talk now, or should I let you get on with your Christmas Eve celebration?”

“I’ve got time,” Derek says, “a lot of it, actually, I’m kind of hiding from my mom’s guests.”

“Cool, so, I’ve been having this argument with Scotty and maybe you can be the tiebreaker, because we’ve been talking about the best bromances in the media and he tried to tell me that it was Joey and Chandler from Friends and I mean that’s a good one, I guess, but everyone knows that the best is—”

“JD and Turk,” Derek says, sliding an arm behind his head and relaxing, fully prepared to argue his case, but—

“ _Yes_ ,” Stiles says, “see, hold on, I’m gonna text him right now, that’s exactly it, I can’t believe he thinks Joey and Chandler even compare—”

By the time dinner is over and Derek has made enough of an appearance to satisfy his mother, Stiles is sitting down to dinner on his coast and has sent him a picture of: his wrecked kitchen, crowded living room—featuring the back of all of his friend’s heads as they watch _White Christmas_ on the absolutely monstrous television set on the wall—his Christmas tree, with just the corner of his face in the photo, grinning widely, and the table place settings, which came along with a message that said _Lydia made me buy all new plates for this and she says I can’t return them when we’re done_.

He chooses to walk home rather than stay at his parents—he loves his sisters, but when he had quietly admitted to Cora that he’d called Stiles, she had squealed and Laura had made an irritated noise in the back of her throat and he’s hoping that some space will make her forget (he’ll also be okay with Cora turning on her own brand of youngest sibling charm and convincing Laura that he’s not insane)—it’s less than a mile, and he enjoys it despite the cold. 

Laura’s questions from earlier still weigh on his mind, but the more he thinks about them, the more ridiculous he feels. He doubts there’s a point to worrying one way or another where Stiles wants to live the rest of his life when all they’ve done is flirt with each other over text, and he resents Laura a little for even bringing it up. It just doesn’t matter yet, he thinks, so he’ll just forget about it and when— _if_ —things get more serious, he’ll bring it up with Stiles then.

He detours through the kitchen to grab a bottle of water when he gets home and sheds his layers as he walks downstairs, dropping everything onto the couch to deal with in the morning, and falls face first into bed.

**Derek:** Hope your dinner was good. I’m going to sleep, but you can text me about it if you want.

His phone rings before he’s even done kicking the blankets down. “I—” Stiles says, and blows out a breath of laughter, “wow, I feel like an idiot but I wanted to say goodnight. Like—Christ. Goodnight, Derek. Sleep well.”

“Night, Stiles,” he says, heat following the path of his smile up his cheeks. “Talk to you tomorrow.”


	5. January

Three days into the new year, Derek wakes up late enough that he doesn’t have time to check his messages from Stiles until he’s sitting in the cab that he prays will get him to school faster than the subway. He feels disgusting, bleary-eyed and tired from sitting up with Laura all night, and he doesn’t see how he’s going to stay alert long enough to make it through the day. 

**Stiles:** morning derek! you never called back last night so i hope everything is okay  
 **Stiles:** forgot to tell you that i’m flying out today so i won’t be around until the evening but i’ll call you then  
 **Stiles:** have a good day at work  
 **Derek:** Have a safe flight.

He shoves the phone in his bag and stares out the window, willing the traffic to flow a little faster. He’d thought a lot about what Laura had said on Christmas Eve and had spent the week in between Christmas and New Year’s slowly adjusting to a new schedule, one that meant he wasn’t staying up so late on the phone with Stiles or waking up still exhausted—not because he was pulling away, but because Laura did have a point, as much as Derek hated to admit it. Derek has a tendency to allow people he cares about to push past his boundaries—sisters included—and he’d realized he should probably start setting them a little more firmly if Stiles was going to be someone who stuck around in some capacity. So he’d forced himself to make additional appointments with the therapist he’d stopped seeing so frequently a few years ago, and started figuring out what he needed.

He may have been a little _too_ smug when he’d told Laura about it, because Stiles had only said “dude, of course you need your sleep, one of us should be getting it,” and then had firmly adhered to Derek’s reluctant admission that he should probably be going to sleep before 10:00pm every night to the point where he’d start harassing Derek about getting ready for bed around 8:30pm and saying goodbye shortly after that. 

Derek, God help him, found it incredibly endearing.

But it’d been Laura who kept Derek awake the night before, sitting up against the headboard of her bed and running a hand through her hair while she stared blankly at the positive pregnancy test in her hand until she finally fell asleep just before 2:00am and, exhausted, he’d wiggled down until he was laying flat, closed his eyes, and woke up fifteen minutes past the time he usually left the house.

He makes it into his classroom two minutes before the starting bell, weaving his way through the tables already filled with students looking at him curiously, drops his bag on his desk and realizes a second before he opens it that his laptop is still sitting on his coffee table. “I’m just going to need a minute,” he says, scanning the room for something they could do in place of their bell work. His gaze lands on a folded piece of paper sticking out of Miriam’s backpack and he grins. “You all know how to make fortune tellers, don’t you?” When they look at him blankly, he walks around his desk and picks it up, holding it out.

“That’s a cootie catcher, Mr. Hale,” Miriam says, and a few of the other students laugh.

“Well, you can call them fortune tellers when you tell your parents about this activity,” he says, and sets them up playing M.A.S.H and recording their answers to practice percentages. It’s not the type of game he usually—or ever—does, but without his laptop he’s only got a few options. He lets them play as he mentally re-plans his day, digging out emergency worksheets from the filing cabinet behind his desk, and is flipping through them to find something appropriate for his algebra class when Ben walks up and drops a packet of Pop-Tarts on his desk.

“You look like you skipped breakfast,” he says. “Here you go, they’re strawberry.”

“I can’t take your food,” Derek says, shaking his head, but Ben just pushes them closer, and Derek _is_ hungry. “You sure you don’t want them?”

“I brought them for Julius but he said he only likes s’mores, so they’re extra,” Ben says. “Just thought you might be hungry.”

“Thank you, Ben,” Derek says, and he smiles at the open, pleased look on Ben’s face. “I appreciate it.”

It ends up being the only thing he eats until he gets home; he works through lunch, making copies of the pre-test he needs his classes to do before they start the next module, looks through their winter break packets that his algebra class had been given during his prep, and suffers through a staff meeting after school that he can’t remember a single word of once he steps through his front door.

His phone had died halfway through the day thanks to not charging it overnight and his anticipation of several texts from Stiles crashes and burns after he turns it on and nothing pops up except a voicemail. He leaves the phone sitting on his couch, rummages around the kitchen for leftovers, and finally listens to it after he brings his food back downstairs.

Stiles’ voice is quick but quiet when he says “ _Derek, hey, I was spending the morning with my Dad but you’re at work anyway so you probably won’t miss all my messages. Anyway, there was a huge accident on the freeway and my Dad stopped to help_ — _sheriff thing, you know, anyway_ — _it took too long and now my flight leaves in literally ten minutes and I’m running through the airport and I probably look crazy but I didn’t just want to text you because I actually hate flying, which sucks because I fly a lot for my job, uh_ — _anyway, I usually text my friends dramatic goodbyes and shit but I didn’t want you to worry and I thought_ — _oh, sorry, here’s my boarding pass, I’m really sorry, thanks_ — _sorry Derek, uh, if you listened to all of this, I’ll call you when I get home and_ — _okay. Uh, bye._ ”

He listens to it three times and falls asleep, exhausted, in the middle of an episode of Fixer Upper and wondering exactly where _home_ was for Stiles if not California.

“Snow day!” Erica yells gleefully after Derek mumbles out a greeting, and promptly hangs up. He’s left blinking in confusion, rubbing at his eyes and yawning before looking up to the small window at the top of his wall and seeing snow piled against it. He sinks deeper underneath his covers, breathing in the quiet until his alarm blasts in his ear and he has to wiggle an arm free to turn it off.

He usually goes back to sleep on snow days but he’d fallen asleep early the night before and he’s pretty sure eleven hours of sleep is enough, so he unlocks his phone and smiles when he sees that he has two missed calls from Stiles and a bunch of texts.

**Stiles:** landed fuck there was so much turbulance  
 **Stiles:** flew through a storm and apparently it’s supposed to start snowing soon  
 **Stiles:** it feels weird not saying goodnight to you  
 **Stiles:** night, derek, call me tomorrow  
 **Stiles:** if you want

He tries not to be disappointed that, for the first time since before Thanksgiving, there’s no good morning text waiting for him. He switches over to his voicemail and presses play, bringing the phone to his ear instead of using speaker like he normally does; Stiles’ voice in his ear is more intimate, a comfort against the loneliness that’s started to seep into the cracks, a Stiles-shaped absence that grows heavier each day. 

“ _I couldn’t just text you goodnight, I guess, it feels weird not to say it out loud so goodnight, Derek_.” Stiles’ voice is slow and scratchy, heavy and punctuated by a brief yawn before he continues, “ _and good morning, too. I hope you have a good day at work._ ”

**Derek:** I fell asleep early last night, it was a long day. Sorry I missed your calls.   
**Derek:** No school today so you can call if you want when you get up.

He starts to close the app, thinks about Cora lecturing him to be more open, and sends another text.

**Derek:** I missed talking to you yesterday.

He’s in the middle of making breakfast when Stiles calls, and in the minute it takes him to flip off the burner on the stove and dish up his food he’s already smiling, a pleasant fluttering in his stomach before he even hears Stiles’ voice. “Hey,” he says, answering the call and putting him on speaker so he can finish cooking.

“Ugh,” Stiles groans, “you’re so _chipper_ , Derek, God, I just woke up.”

Derek laughs, carrying his plate to the table and sitting down. “Sorry my good mood is ruining your morning,” he says, starting to eat. His mother would be horrified by his manners, but Stiles has spent several conversations loudly crunching on chips, slurping up soup, and downing coffee like it’s the last thing he’ll ever drink, so he doubts he’ll care.

“I’ll deal,” Stiles says, and yawns. “Why’re you home today? Not complaining, I missed you yesterday dude, but I didn’t think you’d get a day off right after your break ended.”

“Snow day,” Derek says, and there’s a thump on the other end of the line. “Stiles? Are you okay?”

“I gotta— _shit_ I always forget about this fucking bench, ow, I keep telling Scott to get rid of it—aw fuck yeah, it snowed here too! I mean they told us it probably would on the plane but I didn’t really believe it. I gotta see if Scott wants to go sledding or something, it didn’t snow enough last year and it bummed me out.”

“Hey, where’s home?” he asks, scraping up the last of his eggs. “I thought you lived in California.”

“Oh, no—well, technically I’m homeless—stop laughing, not like really homeless but definitely without a home, I didn’t renew my lease before I went back home—home like California, I grew up there—so now I’m crashing with Scott until I find a new place here,” Stiles says. A door opens and a moment later there’s muttering, a muffled yelp, and Stiles’ breathless voice comes back. “Derek, help, turns out it’s not a good idea to jump on your best friend’s bed when he and his wife are still sleeping in it—Scott! I’m sorry, _fuck_ , ow dude, not the arm! At least not that arm!”

He shakes his head, listening to the sounds of scuffling over the phone as he eats, Stiles’ laughter interspersed with someone else who eventually yells out, “he’ll call you back, Derek!” and the line goes dead. He finishes his breakfast, cleans up after himself, and the phone rings again as he’s heading back downstairs.

“In my defense, I thought she was already at work,” Stiles says in greeting. “Anyway. I just sent you a picture, I know you claim to hate my guessing games but you always play them so I thought I’d give you picture clues. This one might be difficult but I can—”

He lets Stiles talk while he checks his texts, taps on the picture, and comes to a stop in the middle of the stairs. He sits down, staring at the photo, tracing his eyes over familiar pathways and stone walls as his heart starts to pound.

“Derek?”

“You’re—” he says, taking a breath, “you live in New York?”

He feels like he might be sick as he stands under the arch at Grand Army Plaza, eyes trained down the street he knows Stiles must be coming from, forcing himself to breathe steadily. It had been easy to say yes when Stiles had suggested sledding in the park, easy to let the butterflies return, and downright terrifying when he realized that his self-indulgent fantasy of spending long nights and cold days with Stiles could very well become a reality if he managed not to fuck it up. 

Cora had spent nearly half an hour talking with him on the phone after that, because Derek is nothing if not excellent at imagining worst-case scenarios in stunning, devastating detail, and he knew better than to get Laura’s advice. Not that Cora had been much help—she demanded he recount the conversation three times, arguing with him over whether or not “do you want to go sledding with me?” counted as being asked on a date or not, and demanded he send her a picture of the two of them together, ending the call with _and you better kiss him, you coward_.

He feels his heartbeat stutter the second Stiles comes into view; he still hasn’t figured out what to say, how to greet someone for the first time while being half in love with them. Derek has no frame of reference for this, no idea what’s acceptable, doesn’t know the middle ground between the semi-friendly nod he usually gives people and the urge he has to wrap his arms around Stiles and never let go; he doesn’t have much time to worry about it, because Stiles gives him a blinding smile and pulls him in, hugging him tightly for a moment before letting go.

“Okay, no making fun of the sleds,” Stiles says, holding up what have to be child-sized round pieces of hard plastic. “This was all I could find and it might be uncomfortable but it’ll work for a little bit at least, I figured we could probably get an hour in before we want lunch, and—Derek?”

Derek blinks, forces himself to keep walking. He probably should have guessed that Stiles would jump into the conversation like he usually did, but even though he’s used to their phone conversations, he’s still a little thrown by it. “Sorry,” he says, and Stiles tilts his head a little and grins. “That sounds good, I just—sorry.”

“You can always tell me to shut up, dude, I know I talk a lot,” Stiles says, nodding his head towards the park and starting to walk again, falling quiet this time, and Derek’s not sure how to tell him that he just needs a minute to readjust, that his stomach is in knots and he still feels vaguely sick because he hasn’t so much as gone on a date for three years and he’s still not really sure if this counts; doesn’t know how to tell Stiles that he can’t read people for shit and he likes how direct Stiles and he needs him to do the same thing now.

He wishes he could call Cora again.

They’re just passing through the entrance to the park when Stiles makes a quiet noise and looks over at him, wrapping a hand around Derek’s arm before pulling him off the path and stopping. The dozens of pictures he’d sent Derek didn’t do him justice, Derek thinks, didn’t bleed through the light in his eyes, the pink flush of his cheeks and dark lashes against his skin. He can’t stop watching Stiles’ shifting expressions, the way his tongue darts out and licks his lips, the creases under his eyes and the broadness of his shoulders. “You’re not good at talking,” Stiles says, and his eyes widen slightly before he rushes out, “that’s not an observation, that’s—you told me that. When I called you. I thought since we’ve talked so much that this wouldn’t be any different but it is for you, isn’t it?”

Derek takes a breath in; his lungs sting from the cold, but he feels a warmth blooming in his chest under Stiles’ careful consideration of him. “It takes me time to feel comfortable,” he says after a moment. “I’ll get used to it. And I like to hear you talk, so you don’t have to shut up on my account.”

Stiles smiles at him, happy and genuine, and Derek’s heart skips a beat when Stiles’ hand slides from his bicep down to his forearm and pauses for a moment before he lets go. “So this is your territory, you should probably be the one leading us. Scott and I usually go to Pilgrim Hill which is great but crowded; I’m sure you like the snow days but I gotta say, my sledding experience would be better if I wasn’t dodging so many kids.”

Derek relaxes slowly, spends the time it takes them to get to the hill reminding himself that Stiles seems to share his feelings—he didn’t need Cora’s insistence that friends didn’t leave messages just to say goodnight to know that Stiles probably spends a much time thinking about Derek as Derek spends thinking about him. He hates that Kate is in the back of his mind, that he’s hesitant and cautious because there’s a part of him that still tells him he doesn’t deserve good things, that people lie and have ulterior motives and aren’t to be trusted.

But Stiles doesn’t know about his wealth, he reminds himself, and Kate would have never sat down on a child’s sled and cheerfully demanded a rematch on their race down the hill; Derek still needs to work on letting people in, but he’s _trying_.

They go crashing down the hill for nearly an hour; Stiles is all long-limbs and little grace, tripping over himself and grabbing onto Derek for balance, setting a terrible example for the kids around them as he intentionally tries to swerve into Derek’s path. Derek’s just starting to think about how he could suggest getting lunch or figuring out another way to extend their time together when Stiles accomplishes what he’s been trying to do all afternoon and slams into Derek’s side, yelling with breathless laughter when they both tip over onto the snow as Derek wraps an arm around his waist and drags him down with.

They end up at the bottom of the hill in a heap, Stiles grinning up at him after Derek props himself up on one arm and leans over him; he intends to grab a handful of snow and rub it in his face,but Stiles’ cheeks and lips are pink and inviting, and when Stiles’ hand comes up and cups his cheek, it doesn’t feel playful at all, but soft and hopeful. 

Stiles’ lips part as Derek leans down and kisses him, warm lips a sharp contrast to the cold fingers that are sweeping across his cheek; his other arm comes up and wraps around Derek’s neck, but Derek doesn’t need to be pulled closer because he’s already sinking in, settling some of his weight on Stiles as they kiss slowly, all soft lips and quiet breath. He’s not sure how long they lay there, but gradually he becomes more aware of the cold seeping into his wet jeans and moves away, gratified by the small sound of protest Stiles makes. 

“I don’t live far from here,” he says, helping Stiles up and giving him a quick once over, “if you’d be comfortable with it—”

“Yes,” Stiles says, beaming. 

Derek laughs. “You don’t know what I was going to suggest,” he says, shaking his head and picking up their sleds, pointing Stiles in the direction they need to go.

“Doesn’t matter if it means that I get to spend more time with you,” Stiles says, shrugging. He takes the sleds from Derek and jogs off, handing them over to a group of kids who had been taking turns on one. When he comes back, he reaches for Derek’s hand, and doesn’t let go.

Derek doesn’t remember exactly how they got here, laying on the couch with Stiles in front of him, wearing a pair of Derek’s sweats while Derek brushes his lips across his neck and shoulder. They’d made lunch together in the kitchen, Stiles pressed up against his back, or legs wrapped around Derek’s waist as he sat up on the counter like he belonged there, tossing grapes up into the air and mostly failing to catch them with his mouth, had brought their food to Derek’s living room to eat, and now their dirty dishes are stacked on the coffee table and Derek is quickly getting lost in the feel of Stiles’ body against his; the way his thigh tenses when Derek kisses behind his ear, the unevenness of his breath when Derek drags his cheek up Stiles’ neck.

He takes a steadying breath and pulls his head back slightly, chuckling when Stiles lets out a very obvious whine, releasing the bruising grasp he has on Stiles’ hip to slide his hand around and rest against his stomach. “This okay?”

Laughter isn’t the reaction he was expecting, but Stiles shakes against him before he tilts his head and kisses Derek’s jaw quickly. “This is so much more than okay,” he says, “this is—okay, God, I can’t believe you just asked that. See if you can get rid of me now, I dare you.”

Derek laughs and leans in more to kiss his cheek. “I’m good with you sticking around,” he says. “I’d like that.”

“Ha, my master plan worked,” Stiles says, and a moment later he’s pressing back against Derek, drawing Derek’s arm tighter around him. “How do you feel about naps?”

“Naps are great,” Derek says, letting go of Stiles and reaching for the blanket he keeps folded on the back of the couch. He tries to shake it out one handed, fails, and tries to push Stiles back down when he props himself up to help. “I got it,” he protests, and Stiles rolls his eyes but lays back down—facing Derek, this time, shoving his bent knee between Derek’s legs and pillowing his head against Derek’s chest.

“Nap,” Stiles says, “then we can go enjoy the snow again.”

He presses a kiss to Stiles’ forehead, lets his head drop down onto the pillow, and falls asleep.

“What kind of underwear do you wear?” 

He stops with his hand on a book and looks over, raising an eyebrow at Stiles and his faux-innocent face. “That’s what enquiring minds want to know?”

“Extremely important research,” Stiles says, accepting the book Derek hands him and flipping it over to study the back. “Huh, this actually looks good. I was a little afraid you’d find some boring math book to give me.”

“Uh huh. Boxer briefs,” Derek says, ignoring the appraising look that Stiles gives him. “What’s your favorite ice cream?”

“Uh, any? Dude, I’m not about to turn down ice cream,” Stiles says. “What—”

“That’s not an answer,” Derek interrupts.

“Fine, it’s butter pecan,” Stiles says, reaching for his hand and tugging him down the aisle. “What movie makes you cry every time?”

“I don’t tend to rewatch movies that make me cry,” Derek says. He pulls Stiles back, wraps his arms around his waist and leans in to kiss him. Being with Stiles is easy in a way that never was with Kate, even in the beginning; he sinks into Derek whenever he has a chance, always touching him, ducks in for one more kiss whenever Derek starts to pull away. 

“That’s not an answer,” Stiles teases against his lips, kissing him one more time before stepping out of his grasp and weaving his way through the bookstore. 

“Fox and the Hound,” Derek says, “but I haven’t watched it since I was a kid. Where do you work?”

Stiles stops in front of the biographies and crouches down, long fingers running over the spines. “A lot of places,” he says. “I’m, uh, a consultant. I analyze systems for weakness and work with a team to deliver a product. Scott works with me, too, but he’s more like—systems containment.”

“That means nothing to me,” Derek says honestly, holding out his hand when Stiles pulls out a book and hands it to him. “Yeah, I’ll read this,” he says, glancing at the cover. “I love baseball.”

“Yeah?” Stiles says, standing up. “That’s—if you tell me that—”

“Yankee fan,” Derek says, laughing when Stiles makes a disgusted face. “The Bronx Bombers, Stiles, you can’t be a New Yorker and—”

“Stop talking right now,” Stiles sighs, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I still want to kiss you after that,” he says, pulling Derek in by his coat. “This is making me rethink everything.”

“I’ll never watch them again,” Derek promises, and Stiles laughs against his mouth.


	6. The Wind-Up

“Are you even looking for a place?” Allison asks, slouching down beside him on the couch. “Because it doesn’t look like you’re looking for a place.”

He pauses, breakfast burrito halfway to his mouth. “I’m thinking about looking for a place,” he hedges. “I’ve been a little busy—”

Allison snorts. “Busy eating your way through the city,” she says, poking his stomach; he fends her off and folds in on himself, tilting away. “When’s the last time you worked out?”

“It’s the _off-season_ ,” he says, taking a huge bite just to spite her. “No one works out in the off-season.”

“Scott’s been to the gym every day since he’s been back,” Allison says, making a face when a bit of egg falls out of his mouth. “Charming, Stiles, really. I know you’re still floating on cloud nine and all with Derek, but you report in three weeks—”

He groans and slides off the couch, landing on the floor at Allison’s feet. “Evil,” he hisses, lifting up his shirt and peering at his stomach. He doesn’t _look_ out of shape, he’s probably fine. “I haven’t even told him yet that I’m leaving, I don’t really know how to drop the whole ‘guess what I’m hardly going to be around for the next ten months’ bomb. I thought I’d have more time to convince him that I’m worth this shitty schedule.”

Allison digs her bare feet into his sides until he yanks his shirt back down and rolls away. “If he doesn’t already think you’re worth it, he’s not the right guy for you,” she says, picking up his abandoned breakfast and taking a bite. “Most of your relationship has been long-distance, you don’t think he’d be okay with going back to that? Do a few sit-ups while you’re down there,” she adds, one eyebrow raised.

“Wasn’t really a relationship when I was in Beacon Hills,” he says, grunting when she kicks at him and propping up his knees. Better to listen to her than to have bruises, he thinks, pulling himself up. It starts to burn after ten, which means he’s more out of shape than he should be, which was probably why she made him do it. “Fine, I’ll go to the gym, but I was supposed to see Derek today—”

“I’m _shocked_ ,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Bring him with. We can put you on the hill, let you show off a little.”

He stops halfway up and grimaces. “I can ask if he wants to come,” he says, “but he doesn’t actually know about the baseball thing yet? So no tossing or anything. Just lifting and whatever other horrors you want to put me through.”

When he looks up at her, her eyes are narrowed. “You’ve been talking to him since September—”

“October.”

“—and he doesn’t know what you do for work?”

He flops back on the ground. “I might have made it sound less like ‘starting pitcher for a major league baseball team’ and more like … independent consultant. Uh. Scott, too.” She’s staring at him like she’s never seen him before, and he groans. “Allison, please,” he says, “you can think it’s stupid—”

“Are you worried he’ll out you?” she asks, all big eyes and concern, and Stiles sighs. “If that’s the kind of guy he is, Stiles, maybe you should just end this before you get too attached.”

Fat chance, he thinks. Passed that mile marker long ago, right around the time he heard Derek’s voice say his name for the first time. “That didn’t even cross my mind,” he says. Everyone on the team knows, he doesn’t care if it gets out. It’s not like he’s the only one. “It has nothing to do with Derek at all, I’m just not ready yet. It changes things, you know? You know that. I’ll tell him, I swear, just … later. When I’m ready.”

“Okay,” she says, doubtfully. “I won’t say anything. No one else is scheduled until noon, so if you want to go soon you won’t need to worry about Dad being around or anyone else saying something.”

“You’re the best,” he says, pulling himself up and kissing her cheek. “Give me ten minutes to get ready and we can take the subway together.”

“Oh, no,” she says, grinning. “Text the address to your boyfriend and tell him to meet us in an hour and a half. We’re running.”

His soul has left his body. That’s the only reason he can think of for the way the lights halo around Derek’s concerned face, a fine sheen of sweat over his skin, a bead slowly making its way down the crease of his nose. Stiles feels heavy, like the first time he smoked weed in college, limbs filled with concrete while his chest heaves of its own accord. “I think I see God,” he whispers, and Derek’s mouth cracks into a smile before a surprised laugh rises.

“That’s your boyfriend, you loser,” Allison says. “You still owe me ten burpees, come on.”

“I’d roll my eyes but I don’t have the energy,” he informs her. He clings to Derek’s hand as Derek helps him up and promptly feels like his legs are going to buckle underneath him. Apparently his dad was right when he said that twice-weekly runs through the preserve would not suffice as an off-season workout and Stiles deeply, deeply regrets not believing him now. “I’m pretty sure this is the worst I’ve ever felt,” he says, glaring over at her. “You did this on purpose.”

“Sure did,” Allison says cheerfully. “Burpees. Or cages. Take your pick.”

“Cages?” Derek asks, looking alarmed, and Stiles groans. 

“We have batting cages out back,” Allison says, and Stiles keeps his protests in when he sees the look on Derek’s face shift to something more excited than apprehensive. “We don’t normally use them—” she says, and Stiles shakes his head. They use them every time, but it’s a lie for his sake. Still, he knows how to pull his power, not that he really needs to when he has all the arm strength of Gumby.

“Derek likes baseball, we can try it out,” he says. “As long as I can make it out there.”

“No problem,” Derek says, and the next thing Stiles knows he’s over Derek’s shoulder and Allison is laughing next to him, phone out, no doubt recording this for the next time she wants to humiliate him.

“Perfect,” he says, trying to sound more unamused than turned on. “Wonderful. Didn’t know you were descended from cavemen, Derek, and you know what, Allison? Not cool to go easy on him, have you seen his abs? He could probably do twice what I do—”

“He did,” Allison interrupts. “Weight wise, at least, I gave him more. You did the same amount of sets.”

Like he said—humiliating. 

“Well, he didn’t have to run the four miles here,” he grumbles. “He had an advantage.”

Watching Derek in the box is—intoxicating. Stiles has seen hundreds of batters taking swings in his life, men with more finesse, men with more power, but there’s something addicting about watching Derek choke up on the bat, shift his stance, and wait. He finds himself on the edge of the bench, mouth dry every time, waiting for the familiar crack of the bat when Derek connects, watching his follow-through not with the gaze of someone who knows how to pick apart every idiosyncrasy but with simple appreciation for the movement of his body, for the energy that he channels with every swing.

Still.

“He turns his left foot in too far on the follow-through,” he mutters to Allison. “Correct it.”

“You correct it,” she says half-heartedly. “Can you tell if he’s over-rotating?”

“He needs to work on his hip and shoulder separation,” Stiles says, focusing on Derek’s timing, watching the way his shoulders work. “Grab the rack and make him adjust that stance. Show him how to do the talk test.”

“Bossy,” she says, elbowing him. “He’s not a player, Stiles, it doesn’t really matter.”

“He’ll tear something once he gets a little more power behind his swing,” he says. “Correct it. I have a feeling we’ll be doing this a lot once he knows.”

The machine clicks off and Derek turns towards them, grinning. “Not bad,” Allison says, hopping up. “Stiles, take his place, set it to whatever speed you want. Derek, come here, I want to show you something.”

He takes the bat from Derek as they pass; Derek holds onto it for a moment longer and uses it to pull Stiles off-balance, leaning in and kissing his cheek as he passes, and Stiles tries not to grin too much like an idiot as he adjusts the fastpitch machine and pulls a helmet on. He’s distracted at first, watching Derek and Allison out of the corner of his eye, but after Allison yells at him he tries to clear his mind and focus. He’s not sure how long he goes, hit after hit sending a pleasant ache up to his shoulder before he stops; when he looks up, it’s to Derek leaning against the chainlink fence and watching him with a look in his eyes that takes Stiles a moment to register as desire.

He drops the bat onto the rack and steps out; Derek catches him around the waist almost immediately, and Stiles has never welcomed metal digging into his back as much as when Derek presses him against the fence and sets his mouth on the exposed slope of Stiles’ shoulder. He fists a hand into the back of Derek’s hair as Derek bites down gently, crowding his body against Stiles’, dragging his mouth up slowly until Stiles feels like a panting, needy mess.

“Jesus, Stiles, take it home,” Allison says, and Stiles bites down on his tongue so he doesn’t say anything. “Derek’s home, considering you don’t have one.”

“Sorry,” Derek mutters; his face is still turned in towards Stiles’ neck, and Stiles uses the hand in his hair to soothe up and down his back.

“She’s just jealous she doesn’t have you waiting at home for her, she’s stuck with Scott,” Stiles says, sticking out his tongue, and Allison rolls her eyes. He tries to breathe through the annoyance he feels; even if they hadn’t been in the middle of the gym, he doubts it would have gone anywhere given that Derek’s been pulling back every time they get close to taking it a step further, but Derek had felt almost desperate against him and Stiles resents Allison a little for interrupting that. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll show you where the locker room is. Grab your bag.”

“Do you train with Allison a lot?” Derek asks him later, after they’ve demolished burgers and fries and Stiles is looking longingly at the coffee in Derek’s hand. They’re nearly at Derek’s—they’ve been making their way back slowly, ducking into shops that look interesting, pressing into quiet corners because Stiles can’t manage to keep his hands or mouth off of Derek for too long.

“When I’m not working,” Stiles says, glancing at the coffee again. Derek hands it over with an amused, indulgent smile, slipping his arm around Stiles’ waist. 

“It was for you, anyway,” Derek says. “I was just waiting to see how long it would take you to ask for it.”

“I was trying to be polite,” Stiles protests, but his heart’s not in it, not when Derek leans over and kisses his cheek and the warm cup is protecting his hands from the chill in the air. “So—I wanted to tell you something about work, uh—I know I’ve been hanging around you every day but unfortunately bills to pay and all that so—the thing is, the work I do, it’s a pretty heavy schedule. It sucks, actually, it’s the only thing I _don’t_ like about it because there’s very, very little downtime during uh, my contract, like maybe two days off a month sometimes? Usually two or three. And most of our work is at night so I’ll have mornings off but I also have to travel a lot—like half the month I’ll be away from home—and—” he stops and takes a breath, unsure if he’s actually managed to convey the problem to Derek, if his rambling has made any sense. Derek’s frowning at the sidewalk, so Stiles takes another breath and presses on. “The thing is, I’m kind of getting a promotion, a little bit, so I have to leave in a few weeks and between some training and traveling, I won’t be back here until April.”

Six weeks. He’ll be gone six weeks, which is twice the amount of time he’s spent with Derek in New York so far. He waits, holding the rest of his words until Derek responds so he knows which plan of attack to follow, because he’s thought through conversations for every scenario he could come up with. It’s killing him though, to stay quiet while the look on Derek’s face grows more grave, past thoughtful and into resigned, his silence a weight on Stiles’ chest that threatens to suffocate him. Derek looks over at him just as they turn onto his block, but it’s just a fleeting glance and Stiles feels the piled-up words threaten to burst from his lips; he presses them together, tries to project his hopefulness, and waits.

Derek doesn’t say anything until the stop at the front door, and even then it’s just, “Did you want to come in?” Stiles nods—it has to be a good sign, he thinks—hopes—but it’s not until they’ve hung up their coats and Stiles is sitting on the edge of Derek’s couch that Derek looks over at him and says, “Is this your way of saying that all this—the last few weeks—was it just something to do while you passed time? That it’s over?”

He opens his mouth, closes it again, and tries to remember exactly what he said that would give Derek the impression that he wanted it to be over. “I—no, I don’t want that at _all_ , I thought maybe you would because it’s going to suck, okay, I don’t actually know how Scott and Allison make it work because it’s the shittiest schedule and I’ve thought of twenty-eight ways to make it better but no one listens to me.” The rest of Derek’s words sink in right around the time Stiles takes a breath, and he shifts over on the couch until he’s pressed against him. “You’re not a way to pass time,” he says quietly. “I swear, Derek, that’s not what this was. Anything I can do to make it easier on you, I will, just—every off day is yours, every morning I’m in New York, anything. I want this to work.”

Derek’s body relaxes slightly, and Stiles allows himself to be pulled at and maneuvered until he’s slouched down and tucked under Derek’s arm. “Does this mean you’ll go back to sending me five hundred texts a day?”

“At _least_ ,” Stiles swears, grinning against Derek’s shoulder when Derek shakes his head and laughs. “Get ready for it. I’ve got _ideas_.”

“I’m—a little scared,” Derek says. “Maybe run them by someone first.”

“They’d just tell me not to do them,” he scoffs. “Besides, I’m friends with a bunch of losers. Scott’s idea of romance is to buy Allison the smelliest perfume and most expensive chocolate he can find, Jackson thinks it’s not a date unless the restaurant has a michelin star, and Danny—don’t get me started. Trust me, you do not want their input into this. You know they told me I texted you too often when we first started talking?”

“No, really?” Derek asks, and Stiles generously ignores the sarcasm dripping from his voice. 

“ _Ideas_ ,” he says again, and then doesn’t say anything else for a very long time. 


	7. February

“I have to grade, I can’t see you tonight,” Derek mutters under his breath, making his way down the empty hallway quickly and keeping his head down as he walks out the front doors, intent on getting to the subway station. “I’m sorry, Stiles, but I can’t see you tonight. Sorry, I want to, but I need to get this done and can’t see you tonight. Sorry, I—”

“Surprise!” Stiles says, and Derek gives an undignified jump as he rounds the corner, heartbeat notching up before he realizes what’s happening. Stiles furrows his brow, the left corner of his mouth tilting down slightly, head cocked. “Or—not a good surprise? Sorry, I figured if I met you here then we’d have an extra hour together but I can see now how showing up at your workplace when you never actually told me where your workplace was could—and should!—be considered stalking, which is definitely not a thing I should be doing so just say the word and I’ll never do it again—”

Healthy relationships have boundaries, he tells himself. It’s something his therapist drilled into him, had him repeat over and over, gave him _homework_ where he had to identify good boundaries to have and practice ways of enforcing them. And now Derek has spent several weeks _not_ enforcing this particular boundary, the one where he needs time to work outside of work, and he’s suffering the consequence. Namely, that the grading period ends two days after Stiles leaves, and Derek has a stack of homework and tests that have accumulated over the last three weeks, all woefully unmarked, taunting him. And it’s not that Stiles is ignoring Derek’s need to get his job done, because Derek hasn’t actually told him what he needs, which is why—

“You can’t come over tonight,” he says, and cringes. “Wait, that’s—I was going to call you. I hate to do this because you’re leaving in a week, but I’m so far behind on grading that I’m pretty sure it’s going to take me the rest of the day to get through it, and I need to get it done because—”

“Derek,” Stiles says, leaning in and cutting him off with a quick kiss, “you’re starting to ramble like I do. Slow down, man. Can I ride with you home, or do you work on the train?”

He works on the subway, of course he does, hunched over in his seat with papers in his lap, pen cap sticking unsanitarily out of his mouth. “Ride home with me,” he says.

“Cool,” is all Stiles says before grabbing his hand. “How was your day? Did Lauren make up with Zander yet? Is Ash still ignoring her old friends for the popular kids?”

Stiles’ fascination with middle school drama never fails to amuse him, but as much as he teases him about it, not even his sisters remember the names of Derek’s students and the various situations they get themselves into, and Derek likes that Stiles cares enough to do so. “Lauren and Zander are still split—he brought a single rose to school for her today and she threw it in the trash—”

“A goddess,” Stiles interjects, smirking. “Good for her, full bouquet or nothing.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “And Ash wasn’t here today, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that. I’ll let you know tomorrow. I’m sorry for being rude earlier, it’s just that the period ends right after you leave and it normally takes me a few days to get all my grades submitted or I would just wait.”

“Dude, if that was rude, you’re gonna faint when I start working and basically shut down whenever I have a crisis, which by the way is like, twice a week. Apologies in advance, it’s me not you, all that shit, call me out on it if I get really bad because I’m not used to, uh, anyone new? My friends have been my friends since we were five—shit, sorry, we were talking about you. So, grading—that’s a _go away Stiles_ activity? Or am I allowed to stay if I sit quietly on the couch—Derek, I _see_ that look, I can be quiet.”

“You just want to sit there while I work?” he asks doubtfully, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I—” Stiles cheeks flush as they round the corner to the subway station; when he looks away, Derek squeezes his hand. “It’s just nice to be around you, you know?”

“You’re probably the first person to think that,” Derek says, nudging Stiles with his shoulder even as his heartbeat trips in his chest. He wonders if it’s giving in if he agrees, what it says about his willpower that he wants to immediately agree, what his therapist would think about how he’s allowing Stiles to negotiate. “If it’s too distracting—”

“I’ll leave,” Stiles says immediately. “You can say no, I won’t be upset—bummed, yeah, but your job is more important than that.”

He should probably say no; he’s not sure how much work he’ll get done with Stiles hanging around, but it was Stiles who had said goodbye on the phone more often than not when Derek had started setting limits on how late they could talk, so he just nods. “We can try,” he says. “Maybe you could make me dinner for once.”

“Oh, I’ve got us covered,” Stiles assures, slipping his free hand into his coat pocket and coming up with his phone, waving it around. “Let’s see, we’ve got Uber Eats, Caviar, Grubhub, and Postmates on this baby. I’ll take care of you, boo.”

Despite the constant chatter the entire subway ride home, Stiles falls quiet immediately after Derek lets them into the house, spending a moment picking out a book before falling onto the couch and beginning to read. Derek gets through his back-log of algebra homework and quizzes before Stiles orders them dinner, takes a break while they wait for it to be delivered to make out with him lazily on the couch, sucking a mark into the hollow of his collarbone and pressing against him until Stiles’ cheeks are a patchwork of pink. He tackles his 7th grade work while they eat, digging his fork into a container of pad see ew while Stiles holds out spoonfuls of curry for him to try, shifts his position on the couch afterwards so that he can lean back against Stiles and rest his chin on the arm Stiles’ wraps around his chest. 

His concentration starts to flag as he’s finishing up the stack; it takes more self-control than he feels like he has to get through the last ten assignments and as soon as he’s finished he tosses the whole pile onto the coffee table, leans his head back, and sighs.

Stiles leans his head over, eyes not straying from his book, and presses a kiss to Derek’s head. “Doing okay?”

“Can’t look at them anymore,” Derek says. He pulls off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose, pinching it in between his fingers in hopes the pressure staves off the headache he can feel building. “I’m sorry, I’m going to have to finish them tomorrow.”

Stiles tosses the book onto the coffee table; it slides off the other side and Derek huffs out a laugh. “I can think of worse ways to spend time with you,” he says, “unless you’d rather—”

“You should meet me at the school again,” Derek says. He turns his head in towards Stiles arm and rests his cheek against his bicep, breathing in the closeness and comfort of Stiles’ body, the feel of his hand against Derek’s skin where he’d slipped it underneath his sweater, thumb rubbing softly.

“Stalking is your thing, huh? Good to know,” Stiles teases. “Told you I could be quiet. I should probably take off soon, it’s almost your bedtime, old man.”

Derek brings his hand up and runs it along Stiles’ arm, pushes his fingers under the hem of his long-sleeved shirt and traces idle designs on his skin, pulls them back out and wraps his palm around Stiles’ wrist. He’s gotten used to having Stiles in his space, has adjusted (maybe too quickly) to hands on his body, a mouth against his own, the slow pressure of someone easing into his heart. It scares him less than he thought it would, but maybe that’s just because it’s Stiles. “Or you could stay,” he says quietly. “It’s nice to be around you, you know?”

“Aww, you’re the first person to ever say that about me,” Stiles says, and Derek smiles when he feels the kiss pressed against his temple.

“Jesus fuck it’s early,” Stiles mutters, face mashed against Derek’s back. Derek had woken up slowly, called to consciousness before his alarm by the feel of Stiles’ arm sliding across his waist, and had done nothing but lie there and revel in the feel of Stiles in his bed. “You do this every day? Nightmare. It’s _dark_ out.”

Derek laughs, a quiet, low rumble in his chest that makes Stiles squeeze him tighter. “Go back to sleep,” he says. “You don’t need to be awake.”

“Yeah, okay,” Stiles says, and when Derek eases himself out of bed and gathers a change of clothes from his dresser in the dim light that filters from the city outside his window, Stiles rolls into Derek’s abandoned space, presses his face into the pillow, and sighs. He doesn’t wake up again, not even when Derek hesitates by the bed as he’s leaving, unsure if he should say goodbye or not. He ends up letting him sleep; kneels down and kisses his cheek, feeling ridiculous while he does so, and texts Stiles as soon as he’s out the front door.

**Derek:** Didn’t want to wake you up, you can stay as long as you want. There’s a spare key on the counter for you to lock up. See you at 3?

He spends his morning entering as many grades as he can, hunched over his laptop until the bell rings and his kids come staggering in, rubbing at their eyes pitifully and yawning. He lets them slouch in their seats for a few minutes, grumbling about the early hour while they do their bell work, then projects the Kahoot game on the board and grins as they perk up and start with the good natured boasting. “So this should take about half an hour,” he says, talking quietly so they calm down, “and as I was looking over your quizzes, I realized we needed some more practice in fractions, so we’ll go over that at the end of class.”

Sophie raises her hand, leaning across her desk and she stretches up eagerly. “Can we play MASH again?”

“If we get through everything, sure,” he says, which is how he ends up sitting in a free chair with ten minutes left in the period, rolling a die in his hand as Terry scribbles his answers down on a sheet of paper. 

“We have that chick—um, _actress_ , sorry Mr. Hale—from Parks & Rec, AOC because Ana insisted even though she’s too young for you—”

“We’re the same age,” Derek says, frowning.

“—huh, you look older, no offense, so we still need two more. You want me to write down your girlfr—oof, um, person you’re dating?”

Miriam elbows Terry, and Derek looks at her curiously, eyebrow raised until she says, “Well, we heard Ms. Reyes talking to Mr. Boyd about your boyfriend,” and looks at him guiltily.

“Snooping, huh?” He knows Erica wouldn’t say anything in front of the students, which means they were definitely somewhere they shouldn’t have been. He’s not open with his students about his sexuality simply because he’s not open about most of his personal life; despite knowing that representation is important, he’s just never been comfortable with it. He won’t deny it, though, so he just shrugs and says, “sure, you can write it down.”

“You should add Chris Evans,” Lila says, and Derek watches in amusement as _Cap America_ and _Mr. H’s bf_ get added. They continue to fill out the rest of the board for him, only allowing him to add one suggestion per topic—centerfielder for the Yankees, three kids, Greece, and a 1950 Ford Sunliner convertible—then rolls the die and lets them count their way down the columns until they’re done.

**Stiles:** fuck what the fuck is your bed made of  
**Stiles:** i’ve never slept like that  
**Stiles:** good luck getting rid of me now bitch  
**Derek:** Who says I want to?  
**Stiles:** tell me what mattress this is, i’m getting one  
**Derek:** I’d rather just have you in my bed.  
**Stiles:** d, you sweet talker  
**Stiles:** deal  
**Stiles:** see you at 3  
**Stiles:** i’ll bring coffee


	8. March

**Stiles:** on the plane dude catch you from the happiest fucking place on earth  
**Stiles:** BYE BABY  
**Stiles:** god damn it that was scott ignore it  
**Stiles:** bye boo  
**Stiles:** have a good day at work  
**Stiles:** i miss you all the time but i really wish you were here  
**Stiles:** fuck i sound like such a sap WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME DEREK  
**Derek:** Have a safe flight.

**Voicemail:** “ _Hey D, we just landed in Orlando and we’re heading to the hotel pool. I’d send you a picture but Scott says I haven’t built up a tan in the last two weeks and I’ll blind you. I know you’re still at work so you know, make those kids learn and shit and call me when you get a chance. I_ — _uh, I’ll talk to you later. Okay. Bye.”_

**Voicemail:** _“It’s cool it’s not like I was sitting here waiting for the phone to ring or anything, take your time, not missing you at all_ — _shut up, Scotty_ — _anyway, Scott and I ran into some guys we know_ — _shut_ up _, fucker_ — _uh, yeah, so we’re going to go out with them now but I swear if you call I’ll pick up, okay, this shit sucks because I’m seriously having withdrawals. Maybe_ — _um. Call me.”_

**Voicemail:** _“Dude I told you I had anxiety, right? Are you okay? Not to sound like a psycho but it’s 11:00pm and you haven’t called me and_ — _oh shit this is dumb. I’m sure you’re busy, with your friends or Laura or something so I’m not gonna freak out. I just miss you, you know, you spend almost every minute talking to someone for a few weeks and you get used to their dumb ass or something. I gotta go but you can call me whenever, it doesn’t matter what time, just_ — _okay. Bye.”_

**Voicemail:** _“I miss you. Goodnight, Derek.”_

**Derek:** I miss you, too. Cora decided to come out and surprise me, which would have been nice except for she jumped on my back the second she saw me and I dropped my phone right down a drain.  
**Derek:** So I have a new phone now. Sorry it took so long to set up. Hope you’re asleep and that you had fun with your friends.

**Derek:** How’s your training going?  
**Stiles:** great dude!!!  
**Stiles:** allison came down to visit scott for the weekend and she made me run seven miles  
**Stiles:** IN THE SUN, DEREK  
**Stiles:** she’s trying to kill me  
**Derek:** I’m glad she didn’t succeed.  
**Derek:** I wish we had a break in March so I could come see you, but it’s a really busy month. I’m sorry.  
**Stiles:** derek  
**Stiles:** boo  
**Stiles:** tootsie pop  
**Stiles:** honey  
**Derek:** Not that one.  
**Stiles:** like you’re literally making my chest ache with how much i miss you and that’s not cool  
**Stiles:** jackson thinks i’m lying about how great you are  
**Derek:** You probably are.  
**Stiles:** my flight home gets in at 4am on april 4 god damn red-eyes  
**Stiles:** i’m just gonna sleep until i gotta go to work but i have the next day off so if you’re free??  
**Derek:** You can sleep here, if you want. Of course I’m free.  
**Stiles:** you want me creepin in your bed at 5am?  
**Derek:** I want you creeping in my bed all the time.

_You’ve reached the voicemail box of_ you know who _, please leave a message after the tone_. “Lauren’s dating Santiago now, and Zander’s trying to get her best friend, Emily, to go on a date with him because Julián told him it would make her jealous. Cristina—she’s one of my 7th graders, I’m not sure if you remember her, she’s pretty quiet—she got caught out with her high school boyfriend past her curfew, and Tomás asked five different girls to the dance that’s coming up, and they all said yes until they realized what happened, and now the kid might not get a girlfriend until college. Uh—I think that’s all the gossip. I feel weird leaving this message but you asked me to call you more so I’m trying. Talk to you later.”

**Stiles:** toast or eggs  
**Derek:** Is this a question? Are you confused about what to have for breakfast?  
**Stiles:** which is better big guy  
**Derek:** They’re best together.  
**Stiles:** aww just like you and me!

**Stiles:** you’ve been given an elephant! you can’t get rid of it, so what do you do with it?  
**Derek:** Buy a house in Africa and let it go on its own.  
**Stiles:** d you gotta think BIGGER

**Stiles:** how do you think the world would be different if bananas were illegal?  
**Derek:** Don’t you have work to do?  
**Stiles:** no  
**Stiles:** come on derek  
**Derek:** Go away.  
**Stiles:** these are important questions!!

_You’ve reached the voicemail box of_ you know who _, please leave a message after the tone_. “Laura’s moving to London, William got offered a job there and they’re going in May. My mom’s losing her shit, she’s freaked out that she won’t ever see her first grandchild and she’s freaking Laura out about giving birth in a foreign country like she’s actually going to be somewhere with a medical tent instead of a hospital. I don’t think it’s registered yet for me; I’m not sure how I’m going to feel. We’ve lived together for eight years, I’m not sure how it’ll be coming home to an empty house all the time.”

**Stiles:** spontaneity or stability?  
**Derek:** Stability. I like to know what’s coming, what’s expected of me. I’m guessing you’d choose spontaneity?  
**Stiles:** i think i’d like stability if it was with you

**Stiles:** which is worse, laundry or dishes  
**Derek:** Dishes.  
**Stiles:** spoken like a man who never dyed all his dad’s uniforms pink

_You’ve reached the voicemail box of_ you know who _, please leave a message after the tone_. “I had an appointment with my therapist today. I’ve been talking about you a lot, did I tell you that? A lot of the things you say—I have a hard time talking about my feelings like that, and I’m envious that it seems to come so easily to you. So I’m glad, I think, that you didn’t answer, even though I want to talk to you, because it’s easier to say this when I know you’re not listening. I—Stiles, I think about you all the time. I eavesdrop on the kids more than I used to just to tell you the gossip, I have a box full of things I bought over the last few weeks you’ve been gone because I saw them and thought you would like them. I cuddle with that stupid teddy bear because it’s something, at least, but it’s a poor substitution for you. I have a whole day planned already when you get back—I took the day off—and I have a fucking countdown until I see you. I say I miss you because I don’t know how to verbalize all of this. When I say I miss you, I don’t just mean that I wish you were here—I mean that I can’t fall asleep because I’m busy thinking about you. I put your picture as the background of my phone. I mean that it feels like a part of me is missing when you’re gone.”


	9. The Stretch

“If you don’t get that phone away from your face, I’ll throw it off the balcony myself,” Lydia says, “and don’t threaten to call security because you know perfectly well they won’t make me leave your room.”

He closes Facebook and glares over at her briefly. “I’ve got the day off, go away,” he says. “It’s 2:53pm, I’m waiting for Derek to call. He’s—”

“ _This_ is exactly what I mean,” Lydia says. She crosses the room and sits on the bed; Stiles rolls away from her and onto the floor on the other side. He’ll shimmy himself under the bed if he has too, but between Derek staying late at school for conferences and Stiles’ schedule, he hasn’t talked to him in two days and he’s suffering. “You’re distracted and it shows, you almost hit two batters last night and Scott says you walked into a wall the other day because you were busy making a video for Derek. You weren’t like this last year, you need to focus.”

“Traitor,” he calls out, and Scott makes a soothing noise back at him. He pulls himself up with his elbows on the bed, pointing at Lydia. “First of all, Cruz told Danny to suck his dick and not in the vaguely homoerotic ‘we’re all friends here’ way that Jackson is so fond of, so if I threw a little high and tight on purpose that’s between Scotty and myself. Second, I did not walk into a wall, I was telling Derek a story _on FaceTime_ and accidentally opened the door a little too hard into my own face, and Scott thought it was hilarious so I’m not sure why he went and tattled to mommy, _Scott_ —”

“She _asked_ , bro!”

“—and third” he says, because he will not be stopped now that he’s on a roll, “last year I spent the entire time in Florida thinking up ways to prank Jackson so no, I didn’t have my phone in my face, but it’s disingenuous to say that I was totally mentally committed to training.”

“He has a point,” Jackson says from the couch. “Don’t talk him out of it, Lyds, I prefer not hearing his voice constantly.”

“I’ll dye your hair purple again,” Stiles threatens, and Scott laughs. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Lydia. Scott talks to Allison all the time—”

“Yeah but I don’t like, text her every three minutes, and dude, Finstock said he would throttle you if got that close to hitting Scherzer again—”

“Then don’t call for a screwball, dumbass, you know my control on that is shit and last time I shook you off you pouted for two innings,” Stiles says. He hauls himself back onto the bed and rolls onto his stomach, checking the time on the phone again. “You guys have to go, Derek’s gonna—” he’s cut off by the ring of his phone and he holds it up triumphantly, tapping the phone to pick up. “You’re no longer welcome, get out, bye, _never come back_ , hey Derek!”

Derek, bless him, has stopped sounding confused at Stiles’ greetings, and his voice is as warm as the sun in Stiles’ ear. “Hey, Stiles. I got your seventeen questions, thank you for sending them all when you knew I was working and wouldn’t have a chance to respond, I really appreciate it.”

He laughs, waving his hand at Lydia, who's still standing by the doorway. “Hold on—didn’t I tell you to go? Go follow your boyfriend to the pool or something, I will not be taking your thoughts into consideration and am in fact likely to step up my game, so to speak, just to annoy you and prove you wrong if we keep talking about it. Sorry, Derek, but you know I’ll forget the questions if I don’t ask them right away.”

“What a shame,” Derek says. “Not sure how you would live without knowing if I would rather be a reverse centaur or a reverse merman.”

Lydia is still standing by the door, arms crossed, staring him down. “It’s really just a way to find out if you’re a horse person,” Stiles says into the phone. Desperate times, he decides, and rolls onto his back, muffling the phone with his hand. “I’m gonna have phone sex with my hot boyfriend now,” he informs her, “so stand there, don’t, I don’t care anymore,” and she finally makes a face at him and turns around, reaching for the door as he focuses his attention back on the phone. “Are you? A horse person? Because horses are creepy, dude.”

There’s a long pause on the other end, long enough that he pulls the phone away from his ear to make sure it’s still connected and frowns, tapping on the speaker. “Derek?”

“What—what was that you said to your friends?”

Derek’s tone has lost its lightheartedness, and Stiles feels his stomach sink. “I was trying to get rid of Lydia,” he says. He’s never felt embarrassed talking about sex, has grown up in clubhouses where vulgarity is expected and celebrated, but Derek is different. There’s no joking about sex, no flippant remarks, no questions, no soft, panted words while they make out on the couch. He’s told Stiles—several times—that he’s not good at talking, that he doesn’t always know what to say and feels like things don’t come out right so it’s not that it _surprises_ Stiles that Derek stays quiet, but Stiles is usually confident in his ability to read body language and he still can’t figure out why Derek pulls away. He probably should have realized it would make Derek uncomfortable before he said it, but it’s too late now. 

“I’m sorry,” he adds, quieter. “I’m not used to censoring myself like that but I’ll try not to do it again, I make jokes like that with Scott and Jackson all the time—not about you! Uh, well, mostly not about you, I might have said a few things but nothing that was a lie. Shit, I sound like I’m making excuses and I’m not, I know you’re not comfortable with it; I mean I don’t think you’re comfortable with it but we don’t talk about it so I don’t really know, I just feel like you’re not _because_ we don’t talk about it—I’m getting off track. I’m sorry.”

There’s heart-stopping silence in which Stiles genuinely considers whether or not he could get to New York and back before the team left for D.C. in order to plead for forgiveness in person, and then—Derek starts laughing. “I’m sorry, I should have stopped you but I’m not mad and I like listening to you ramble, you know? Stiles—you’re right, I’m uncomfortable talking about that. I had—“ he stops for a moment and Stiles hears him huff out a breath a moment later. “I’m working on telling you, okay? I promise—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Stiles says quickly, even though he’s pretty sure he’d trade all the money in his bank account and his ability to play baseball for the chance to hold Derek’s secrets. 

“I know,” Derek says. “I will, though, just not now. I think it just surprised me that you said that, but I don’t know why—I’ve listened to conversations between you and Jackson, I know how you talk.”

Stiles shoves his body further up the bed, scooting until he’s slumped against the headboard. “I’m still sorry,” he says. Derek might not be mad, but Stiles feels a curl of shame low in this stomach. “You know if you want to tell me anything—well, I don’t know. Nevermind. Your voicemail was really nice, you know, it didn’t seem like it was too difficult—”

“I wrote it down,” Derek interrupts, “and it took a few hours but look, can we change the subject? I’d rather be a reverse centaur, I think, and that’s not because I’m a horse person—I’m not really sure what that is—”

“You do too,” Stiles protests, seizing the opportunity to switch topics away from what an astounding dumbass he is, “it’s those teenage girls who cut horse pictures out of magazines and read horse books and wear sweaters with horse pictures and it’s _weird_ , Derek, it is, do you know how big horses are? Of course you do, you’ve been to Central Park, you’ve seen them. They’re freaky, unnatural—and horse people are just unstable, okay, first of all it’s crazy expensive to keep a fucking horse and they’re spending money on keeping an animal penned up so they can brush its hair once in awhile and ride around a ring like it makes them special, and lets talk about how fucking pretentious it is to drive hours to ride a fucking horse—”

“You wanted a horse when you were younger and didn’t get one, did you?” Derek asks, laughing, and Stiles scowls and hisses _slander_ at him as Derek continues talking. “Laura had a horse when she was younger. She named him Chester because there was already a Chestnut at the stable. I’ll give you a thousand dollars if you talk about how weird horse people are when you meet her. Double if you call her pretentious, because we did in fact drive out to Danbury every weekend from Brooklyn.”

“You just don’t want me to make a good impression.”

“Nah, I just don’t think you will anyway,” Derek says, laughing again. “Figured I’d at least get a laugh out of it.”

**Voicemail:** _“I talked to Cora and she says I’m a coward for waiting until I knew you were on the plane to leave you a message. It really didn’t upset me, Stiles, and it didn’t shock me, either, but I didn’t know how to tell you that—I wouldn’t be opposed. No, that’s not_ — _there were a lot of nights that I didn’t want to stop, but to be honest I was worried that—well, I’m still worried, actually, that maybe this won’t go anywhere. I still don’t know how I feel about your schedule and I before you left I thought maybe it would be easier if I didn’t—know. I thought it would make it easier if we didn’t have sex, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”_

**Voicemail:** _“Is there anything that’s difficult for you? In terms of a relationship, I mean. I don’t know what I’m doing, which is a big part of why I’ve avoided relationships for so long, and I have what everyone labels as trust issues but sometimes I think the person I don’t trust is myself … Stiles_ — _I’m sorry. I had an argument with Laura, Cora called and joined in and_ — _I wish this was easier for me. I think you deserve someone who doesn’t have to work so hard to be open. I’m sorry_.”

**Derek:** Goodnight. I hope you sleep well. 

Stiles is so out of it when Danny elbows him awake that he barely makes it down the stairs on his own as they disembark the plane, dizzy with sleep and trying not to wake up fully. Scott’s talking with Issac, so Stiles lets Jackson pull him onto the bus and falls asleep again as soon as he drops his head onto Jackson’s shoulder. He doesn’t think about much other than sleeping straight until noon until he falls into the hotel bed fully dressed and his phone digs into his thigh. He’d charged it before he left Florida so he doesn’t bother getting out of bed to plug it in, just pulls it out to text Derek and pauses when he sees the voicemail notification. 

“You’re too hard on yourself,” he says into the phone quietly after he’s listened to Derek’s messages, eyes closed in the dim light of the room. “And you’re not a coward. Back in college Allison made all of us figure out our love language and it’s probably no surprise that mine was words of affection, so trust me when I say you’re not doing as bad as you think you are, and dude, it means a lot that you’re putting in the effort. So I’ll tell you something that I have a hard time talking about, okay? Two years ago, my dad was shot when he was on duty and I … didn’t take it well. I was working at the time and I only got a week off to be with him, and I was so stressed that I started drinking. Kind of ironic because my dad—well, he sort of skirts that line between someone who just drinks a little too much sometimes and being an alcoholic. I’m pretty sure addiction runs in our family, at any rate.”

The message cuts off and he hangs up, calls again. 

“Anyway, I would have lost my job, I was passing out every night … even after my dad was okay, I couldn’t stop. And I complain a lot about Lydia and Jackson but I only made it through because they helped me. Scott—he’s my best friend, but he’s permissive, and he figured I’d be okay eventually, but Lydia kept the whole issue from my boss and basically set Jackson on me. He stayed in my hotel room when we were traveling, moved himself into my apartment, sat in the waiting room during my therapy appointments and when our contract was up that year he went back home with me and stayed for about a month before he and Lydia decided I’d be alright.”

It cuts him off again and he sighs, thinks about letting it go for the night—he doesn’t want to wake Derek up by calling three times in a row—but clicks the call button once more and waits through Derek’s greeting. 

“I never get off the phone with you and wish that you had said more, okay? I wish that we didn’t have to spend so much time apart, because I think that quality time is probably your love language and my schedule is shit for that, and because I fucking miss you so much that if all we did on our date was sit on your couch I’d still be happy. So no, I don’t think you’re a coward, and I don’t need someone who tells me whatever I want to hear because—you make me _feel_ loved, Derek. That’s not—I’m not fishing, I don’t expect you to say it, I just want you to know. And I love you, okay? I love you. So … I hope you slept okay and I hope you have a good day at work. Goodnight.”


	10. April

The first time he wakes up is to Stiles climbing over him in bed, kicking his way gracelessly under the covers, plastering his body against Derek’s before he breathes in deep and exhales noisily against Derek’s shoulder. His muddled thoughts are too slow; a dreamlike contentment steals over him and before he can figure out how to work his body, he’s fading back into sleep.

The second time he wakes is to his alarm, set ten minutes early because he’s still not sure how he’s going to pull himself out of bed when Stiles is finally there, warm and comforting against him, fingers curled posessively around Derek’s hip. He turns himself around carefully and slides an arm under Stiles’ neck and another over his waist, gets as close to Stiles as he can without ending up on top of him. He breathes him in, presses his nose into the crease of Stiles’ neck and kisses him softly, letting his mouth rest against soft skin, memorizing the rise and fall of Stiles’ chest and the points of contact between them before his alarm goes off again and he reluctantly gets out of bed.

He looks at the trail of clothes Stiles had left on the floor in amusement as he gets ready—jeans by the bed, t-shirt near his bedroom door, a Mets hoodie dropped carelessly over the arm of the couch, arm dangling down and resting on the red backpack underneath, a pair of socks a few feet away from beat-up sneakers. Derek’s not as concerned with clutter as Laura thinks he is, but he’s willing to let her believe what she wants in order to keep the house free of all the tacky knick-knacks she loves. But this—this is Stiles, this is proof that someone loves him enough to go out of their way to spend less than two hours sleeping in bed with him just to be with him. So he picks everything up and folds it, not out of irritation or a need for order but to take care of him in Derek’s own way, and sets it all on top of his dresser—

—except for the Mets hoodie. He puts that in his closet, pulls out the Yankees sweater he had worn the day before, and adds that to the stack instead before sitting on the edge of the bed. Stiles often wakes for Derek’s goodbyes; he draws in a startled breath when Derek cups his cheek and runs his thumb across Stiles’ cheekbone. “Sorry,” he whispers, leaning over and kissing his forehead. “Go back to sleep. I’ll try to call you at lunch.”

“Have a good day,” Stiles mumbles, his hand finding Derek’s and squeezing. “Love you.”

Derek opens his mouth but Stiles is already asleep again, head turned in towards Derek’s pillow. He leaves the room quietly, stops in front of his desk and reaches for the index card that’s been sitting there ever since Stiles left him a voicemail telling him that he loved him and that Derek has run his fingers over every time Stiles has said it since, which was once a day, faithfully, seemingly without any sort of self-consciousness or concern that Derek wasn’t returning the affection. 

He does—he loves Stiles, of course he does, but there’s still a part of him that remembers using the words as a plea rather than a promise, and they stick in his throat when he tries to say them. He’d ended up using his therapist’s suggestion and had used someone else’s words to convey his feelings, had copied out a poem from one of the books Erica had bought him for his birthday that made him think of Stiles. It doesn’t feel like enough, though, not with Stiles sleeping in his bed, not with him so close. So he flips it over, writes _I love you, too_ on the back, and tucks it into the front pocket of Stiles’ backpack on his way out.

Laura’s awake and sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee when he walks in, tearing a toasted, dry bagel into pieces. He makes a face, reaches for a muffin from the pack on the island and leans against the counter. He doesn’t say anything, still unwilling to make amends, but Laura sighs after a moment and looks up at him.

“Is he here?”

“Asleep,” Derek answers, pointing at her with his free hand. “Do _not_ wake him up, don’t even talk to him, just make yourself scarce and let it go. He can stay as long as he wants, don’t make him uncomfortable.”

“I just worry about you,” she says, and Derek has to look away before he caves at the sight of her quiet, pleading face and tired eyes. “Look, I’m leaving in three weeks and I just worry that you’re jumping into this too fast, and I won’t be able to help you once I’m gone. There’s something weird about it, okay? No one’s work schedule is this crazy, no one only has two days off a month and is out of town for weeks at a time. You know what it sounds like when you tell me he wants to come crawling in here late at night? It sounds like you’re his booty call, Derek. It sounds like you’re the second family, the other man.”

“Cora—”

“Cora’s just happy that you’re happy,” Laura says, shaking her head. “She doesn’t want to see it, just like you, so she doesn’t. You can say I’m crazy all you want, but he’s hiding something, and I don’t want to see you get hurt when it’s dropped on your head. Kate was cheating on you, too, and you never saw that one coming.”

“Kate was psychotic,” he snaps, pushing off the counter and dropping his trash into the can, “and I can’t believe you’re throwing that in my face. I mean it, don’t talk to him.” 

She stands up and blocks the doorway, leaning against one side with her arm out, braced against the frame. “I’m sorry,” she says; Derek’s resolve crumbles a little at the exhaustion in her tone. “You’re right, that was out of line. But you’re my little brother, Der, and I worry about you so much. God knows we’re all thrilled that you’re happy, and I know it’s got nothing on you but this is hard for me, too. I need to make sure you’re okay, and something doesn’t sit right with me, but I’ll—I’ll trust you. Okay?”

Derek can hold a grudge with Cora for ages, but it’s something he’s never been able to do with Laura. “Fine,” he says, wrapping his arms around her when she smiles softly and leans into him. “But only because you’re leaving soon. I’m still mad.”

“I’ll take it,” she says, voice muffled against his shoulder. “You better go or you’ll miss your train.”

**Stiles:** your bed seduced me and i didn’t wake up until just now, i’m sorry i didn’t call at lunch  
 **Stiles:** your sister brought me lunch  
 **Stiles:** she’s a little terrifying is she always like this??  
 **Stiles:** like she’s being nice but i’m a little worried that she poisoned this burger  
 **Stiles:** d what the fuck have you told her about me  
 **Stiles:** okay she gave me a hug and she said knew how to divest me of all my organs without leaving scars and i’m scared, derek  
 **Stiles:** i’m just getting to work but i’ll come creep in your bed again tonight boo  
 **Stiles:** love you, d

He doesn’t yell at Laura after he gets Stiles’ texts, but only because she’s nowhere to be seen when he gets home. Evidence of Stiles is, though, and he’s going to have to take back what he had been thinking the night before about mess because—

**Derek:** Wet towels get hung up, Stiles.   
**Derek:** How did you leave so many things around when all you had was a backpack?  
 **Derek:** I’m not mad, just disappointed.  
 **Derek:** That came across as a joke, right? I’m sorry about Laura. I hope she didn’t bother you too much.   
**Derek:** And there’s only a 50% chance that the burger was poisoned.

He doesn’t expect to hear from Stiles; sometimes he gets a text or two around 5pm—memes, links to YouTube videos, rushed voice messages of weird questions or commentary on some issue his friends had brought up—but lately Stiles has been pretty quiet in the afternoons into the night. So he’s surprised when his phone rings as he’s trying to convince himself to eat the food he has in the kitchen instead of ordering in and Stiles’ picture pops up. 

“Hey,” he says. “Did you like your new sweater?”

There’s a pause and then a startled laugh that doesn’t quite sound how it normally does. “Hey, yeah, fuck you for that, I can’t believe I had to wear your fucking Yankees sweater, you dick.”

His closet door had been open when he got home—Derek knows perfectly well that Stiles knew where his Mets sweater was and chose to wear Derek’s on purpose. “Bet you look good in it.”

“ _He looks like a fucking traitor_ ,” someone yells in the background.

“I unfortunately agree with Jackson this time,” Stiles says. 

“ _You love me_ ,” Derek hears Jackson reply. “ _Man up and tell him that he made you cry already, we got shit to do._ ”

The smile drops off Derek’s face immediately, but Stiles just sighs and says, “Go the fuck away, dumbass. I didn’t cry Derek, I teared up a little but there was no crying involved. My eyes got a little watery. It might not have even been about you! Maybe it was because I’m tired of listening to Jackson’s voice.”

“I’m—” he pauses and frowns. “I think I’m a little lost. You teared up because of the sweater?”

He hears someone—several someones—start laughing, and a moment later there’s the sound of scuffling, a yelp, and a door slams. “ _No_ ,” Stiles laughs, “not because of the sweater. Well—yes, but out of shame and disgust, anyway, topic for another time—actually it smelled like you and Jackson spent an hour making fun of me because I kept sniffing it like a weirdo and why am I telling you this? Getting back to the point of this phone call—which I really need to end soon—I got your note. Uh. The poem? Unless someone else put that in my backpack and truly I would accuse Jackson but I don’t think he can read and even if he can, he definitely doesn’t read poetry, and it’s not Scott’s handwriting so that narrows down the suspects a little, so—I got your note. And I might have teared up and perhaps a single, very manly tear dropped but I can’t be sure. I was just going to text you but I stared at my phone for like an hour and Scott’s ideas all sucked anyway. Um. What are you doing tonight?”

“Watching the game with Boyd and Erica at the bar,” he says, thankful for the redirection, because he has absolutely no clue how to respond to Stiles’ monologue. He’d written it down so he wouldn’t have to talk about it—and, if he’s honest, because he suspects that Stiles is not-so-secretly sentimental and would like to have the physical reminder (not that Derek has much room to talk given that he’s listened to Stiles’ voicemail once a day since he left it and has given serious consideration to saving it somewhere else just to be sure it can’t get accidentally erased).

“Oh,” Stiles says, voice going a little high pitched. “That’s cool, yeah, fun, um, I wouldn’t have actually taken your sweater if I had known—”

“I’ve got more than one,” Derek says, amused. “You telling me you only have the one Mets sweater? You’ll be sad when you get home and it’s in the trash, won’t you?”

“When—you know what, Derek, throw it in the trash, I’ve got more Mets gear than you can even believe,” he says, voice turning indignant. “I will paint your entire living room orange, buddy, don’t think for a second that I won’t. Shit, I gotta go, dinner break is over. See you in a few hours, love you.”

The Yankees go into extra innings, and Derek’s just trying to get himself out of Erica’s clutches when his phone rings. “Hey,” he says when he answers, swatting at her hands, “you off work? I’m on my—” the phone gets ripped out of his hands a moment later.

“So _you’re_ the mysterious boyfriend,” Erica says, ducking away when Derek grabs for her. “He never talks about you which, if you know Derek, is a good sign, but I’m a little tired of him keeping you all to himself. We’re still out at the bar, you wanna come join us?”

“Erica,” he hisses, glaring at Boyd when he refuses to intervene and allows Erica to hide behind him. “Give me the phone.”

She blows him a kiss. “Totally understand—oh yeah, Der must have talked about Harris, he’s a real dick, sounds like your boss. Bet you wish it was Derek riding you that hard, am I right? Maybe tomorrow—” she stops as Boyd takes the phone from her, and Derek feels his cheeks redden as Boyd hands it back with an amused look. “Rude,” she pouts, looking between them. “I like him, Derek, he’s funny.”

“I am _so_ sorry,” he says when he gets the phone to his ear, only to hear Stiles laughing. “She’s got no filter, we just ignore everything she says.”

“I like her already,” Stiles says. “I’ll be there in about ten minutes, okay? I’m a little too tired to meet you guys but if you want to stay out later, I can always go home with Scott or—”

“I’m leaving now,” Derek cuts him off, because he’s waited seven very long weeks for tonight and he’s not about to miss it to spend time with Erica, doing the same things he does every week. “I might be there a little after you but I’ll see you soon.”

“Alright, see ya soon babe,” Stiles says, and then he groans. “Fuck, Scott’s rubbing off on me. God damn it. Ignore that, lemon drop, see ya.”

Erica is staring at Derek like she’s never seen him before when he hangs up, and he feels another flush flare up his cheeks as he pulls his jacket on and shoves the phone into his pocket. It takes him a moment to shuffle through the bills in his wallet and he bites out an uncomfortable, “ _What?_ ” when he tosses the money onto the table and realizes she’s still gaping at him.

“You’re smiling,” she says, and the corner of her mouth quirks up when he rolls his eyes. “Shut up, you know what I mean, you have this cute little ‘I get to see my guy’ smile and—it’s _cute_ ,” she laughs. “Oh, Derek, if your students could see you now.”

“My students see me smile more often than you do,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I smile?” She gives him a look and he holds up his hands. “I’m leaving now and if you even think of calling me tomorrow, I’m blocking your number. Stiles works the rest of the weekend though so I’m willing to consider dinner on Friday night if certain conditions are agreed upon.”

“Send me your terms, loser,” she says, blowing him a kiss, and he laughs as he walks away.

It’s hovering just above freezing outside, the temperature plummeting quickly after night falls lately, and his breath curls around him as he walks home, hands shoved deep into the pocket of his jacket. His heart thrums with the anticipation of seeing Stiles, with the quiet joy of knowing that he’ll have a whole week with him, with Stiles in his house and his life and in his bed and—Stiles in his _bed_. He spends the rest of the walk home alternating between using the calming techniques his therapist taught him to get his desire under control and trying to calm the rising anxiety he feels about actually acting on it.

The warm air of the house sends a shiver up his spine when he opens the door, throws goosebumps onto his arms that threaten to take up permanent residence when Stiles comes out of nowhere and presses him back against the front door, hands wiggling under the hoodie Derek still has on and curling around his waist. He brings a hand up to cup the back of Stiles’ head and kisses him, tugging at his hair to tilt his head back and work his mouth down the smooth expanse of Stiles’ throat before burying his face against the soft material of his t-shirt, needing a minute to breathe and adjust to finally being in Stiles’ arms. “Hi,” he says quietly; his hand is still in Stiles’ hair and he scratches his fingers there, dragging his nails over the soft skin at the back of Stiles’ neck as Stiles shivers against him. 

“Hey,” Stiles sighs. “You have fun?” 

He nods, lifting his head to press a kiss to Stiles’ cheek and gently push him backwards, just enough to steer them in the direction of the stairs, keeps one hand low on Stiles’ back as they walk down the stairs together. “How was work? You seem happy.”

“Right, that has everything to do with work and nothing to do with you,” Stiles says, the corner of his mouth that Derek can see tilting up. “It was good, but for some weird reason I just wanted the whole day to be over with. It took me a while to figure out what it was but as soon as I got here I realized—I get to sleep with the love of my life tonight. Your beautiful, wonderful mattress. Seriously, I had _dreams_ about this bed when I was on the road—oof! Derek!”

Derek’s laugh is muffled by Stiles’ chest as he tackles him onto the mattress that Stiles is waxing poetic over, digs his fingers into Stiles’ side as he shifts until he’s straddling his hips and looks down. Stiles is attractive, Derek’s always thought so, but laying in _his_ bed with one of _his_ t-shirts on, golden brown eyes crinkled at the corner as he smiles, cheeks flushed—he’s more beautiful than Derek has words for. He leans down and kisses him, just a light press of his lips against Stiles’ before he whispers against them, “I have a better idea—you could sleep with me instead.”

Stiles’ lips part underneath his as he draws in a breath, his hand coming up to cup Derek’s cheek; Derek leans into it, feels the tenderness behind soft, steady fingertips, a confession that Stiles is tracing into his skin. He brushes his lips across the base of Stiles’ thumb, tries to quiet the pounding of his own heart to focus on the unsteady breaths coming from Stiles’ mouth. The hand against Derek’s cheek smells faintly woodsy, a little smokey; more like hard work and calloused hands than the clean, fresh smell of the forest behind his grandparent’s house, and he reaches up to wrap his hand around Stiles’ wrist and pull it away from his cheek. “I think this is the quietest I’ve ever heard you,” he says. It’s not a judgement or a pointed remark—he just misses the sound of Stiles’ voice.

“Trying desperately not to say a single thing that would make you stop,” Stiles says, breathing out a huff of laughter. “Please tell me it’s working.”

“I like hearing you talk,” he says, lips against the pulse point of Stiles’ wrist, letting his tongue slide against the warm skin there in between soft, open mouthed kisses, lower lip dragging after it.

Stiles makes a small, desperate noise, the hand that’s been resting on Derek’s thigh sliding up slowly. “Holy Christ,” he says, fingers finding their way under Derek’s shirt, “can I keep you forever?”

There’s a lilt to his voice, a cadence that makes Derek think he’s trying to hide behind a joke, but when Derek leans down and kisses him, breathes _yes_ into his neck—he’s not joking at all. The truth is so unbearably heavy between them that Derek pulls back, sits up and just looks at Stiles for a long moment, waits until he feels like he can breathe again. 

Stiles’ hands find his, tangling their fingers together loosely and squeezing gently. He knocks his knuckles against Derek’s thighs and says “up,” after a moment; it’s not easy to slide backwards off the bed from his knees, but he manages, pulling Stiles up along with him because he doesn’t want to let him go. He moves his hands to Stiles’ arms when long fingers make their way up his thighs and work the button of his jeans open, their hands trading places when Derek pushes them down and Stiles rubs his palms against Derek’s forearms. He flips the lamp off before he crawls back into bed and they move around each other easily, like they’ve done it hundreds of times before, until Stiles is shirtless and on top of him, whispers nonsense affection into his ear as they rock against each other slowly. 

He doesn’t know how to ask—isn’t sure he can, had pulled Stiles on top of him in hopes it would make it clear what he needed, but Stiles seems content to let his hands linger on Derek’s skin, writing love letters against his heart with the sweep of his palms. “Stiles,” he says; it comes out as a plea, the weight of all the times he’s wanted this bleeding into his voice. 

Stiles kisses him again, hands framing Derek’s face, and he breathes in the smell of pine and sweat, the feel of fingertips rubbing against his beard. “Derek,” he murmurs, “I just—please, just a little—I’ve wanted to do this for so long, just a little longer—” he nods when Stiles cuts off, and Stiles’ mouth is on his again, a slow, sweet kiss. “Lay on your stomach,” Stiles says, making it sound more like a question than a command, one that Derek doesn’t hesitate to obey.

He feels like he’s floating as he lays there, the soft sweep of Stiles’ fingers up and down his back matching the rising tide of devotion in him as Stiles maps every inch of his skin with his lips and tongue. His breathing grows more ragged as Stiles gets lower and bites gently into the curve of his ass, hands urging Derek up on his knees. 

“Tell me to keep going,” Stiles says, and Derek’s breath catches in his throat. 

He folds an arm above him, drops his forehead onto the pillow and tries to keep his voice steady. “ _Please,_ Stiles—keep going.” There’s lube on the bed, and condoms, dropped there before they’d peeled each other out of their clothes, but it’s not slicked-up fingers he feels against him a moment later, it’s Stiles’ tongue, wet and perfect, and Derek sucks in a sharp breath and tenses his thighs, trying not to move and nearly whining when Stiles pulls away. “Keep going,” he says again, quickly, close to begging. “Didn’t expect—oh, _oh_ ,” because Stiles is working his tongue into Derek, hands spreading him open as Derek fists his fingers into his pillow, rocking his hips back, desperate for more, shameless as he fucks himself on Stiles’ tongue. He could come like this, especially when Stiles slides his hands up and down Derek’s thighs, digging his nails into Derek’s skin in long scratches that will surely leave marks. 

“I need—more,” he says, nearly weeping when Stiles slides a long finger inside him. “ _More_.” Stiles doesn’t pull away, just presses another finger into him as Derek cries out, abandoning all sense of dignity as he gets his free hand under himself and grips the base of his cock tight. 

Stiles moves; Derek rocks backwards again, seeking him out as Stiles mumbles soothing words to him, _I’ve got you_ and _you’re so fucking beautiful_ and unintelligable sounds falling from his lips as Derek hears the condom wrapper tear open and “tell me to keep going,” as Stiles hands tremble despite their firm grip on his hip.

“Keep going,” he says, rolling onto his back when Stiles starts to turn him over, and a moment later Stiles is pushing into him, careful and slow, his hands gripping at Derek like he’s afraid he’ll float away. “Keep going,” he says again as Stiles bottoms out, a heavy, reassuring weight on top of him. He lifts his chin and kisses Stiles, unable to stop the moans that slip through when Stiles rocks his hips, sparks of pleasure flaring up his spine with every bit of pressure, turning Derek into a shuddering mess as Stiles starts to thrust into him harder. Stiles is everywhere, inside him and surrounding him, shifting his weight around on top of Derek, hand on Derek’s stomach and getting lower as he mouths the curve of Derek’s neck. 

Derek comes with Stiles’ hand barely touching him, arching his back as he tenses up and pulling Stiles into him, sinking boneless into the mattress as Stiles fucks him harder, reaching for his hand and squeezing as he stutters out a gasp before collapsing onto Derek’s front. They stay there so long, quiet and still, that Derek starts to feel the chill in the air settle onto his skin, and Stiles pulls out of him with a groan. Derek uses his discarded shirt to clean Stiles up, pulls on something clean and warm before going upstairs to get water, and by the time he gets back, Stiles is burrowed under the blankets. 

“C’mere,” he says quietly; he takes a drink when Derek holds the glass out to him, then drags Derek down with him, pushing their bodies around until he’s tucked himself into Derek’s arms. 

His fingers tap restlessly against Derek’s chest for a moment; Derek rolls his head to the side and presses a kiss to Stiles’ forehead. “Sleep,” he says, reaching across his body to tip Stiles’ chin up and kiss him properly.

“Too wound up now,” Stiles says sheepishly. “But you can go to sleep, I’ll—”

“The Yankees won,” Derek says, because he’s not wasting any time sleeping when Stiles is here and awake. “Walk-off from Judge, it was beautiful.”

Stiles snorts. “Oh wow, your best player got a home run, look how impressed I am. You wanna hear impressed? The Mets won tonight on a triple by their starting pitcher. That’s right, baby, he only allowed four hits _and_ gave them the go ahead run.”

“Sounds like a pretty pathetic team if they need their pitcher to get a run on the board,” Derek says, and laughs when Stiles yelps and tries to push him out of bed. 


	11. May

“I don’t know how to tell him,” Derek sighs, flexing his fingers against his thighs as he looks up at Asha. “The voicemail thing was fine but I don’t want to leave 75 just to get through it, and I tried to start writing it down the other night but I just ended up tearing the paper because I was writing too hard.”

“Technology exists, Derek,” she says, smiling at him. “Use it to your advantage.”

He makes a face and sighs. “It feels too impersonal.”

“That might not be a bad thing in this circumstance,” she says. “Originally you said your intention was to give him the facts, and that may be easier if you don’t feel as connected to your method of communication. It’s worth a try; you can always stop if you need to.” He nods, and she gives him the slow, thoughtful look that means she thinks he’s holding something back. “Nothing else you want to talk about, though?”

Asha was the last in a long line of therapists Derek had tried to see after it was clear that he wasn’t getting anywhere healing on his own after Kate; Laura had dragged him to the first one, then the second and third before turning the job over to their mother. Asha was the first person to realize that Derek wasn’t sitting and staring at the wall in stony silence because he wanted to, but rather because he couldn’t get the words past his throat. She’d spent the entire time leading him in breathing exercises while asking him basic, friendly questions, and at his fourth appointment he’d finally opened his mouth and said, “her name was Kate.” He’s spent the last nine years in and out of her office; he’d been down to four appointments a year—like a haircut, she’d joked—but the day after Stiles had left in February, Derek had switched back to weekly. 

He might not _like_ therapy, but he can’t deny that it helps. 

Derek meets her gaze and bites the inside of his lip; sometimes, being here calms him, but there are moments when he feels like he’s twelve again and has been called to the principal’s office. “We slept together,” he says quietly, a moment later. “I, uh, panicked because I didn’t panic,” he adds, shaking his head. “I was expecting to be apprehensive—I was while I was on the way home, but as soon as I saw him it just—”

Asha nods and leans forward, looking at him carefully. “He respected your boundaries?”

“He—” Derek stops. Therapist or no, Stiles and the sex they’re having is not anything he wants to talk about. “Yes,” he says. “Yeah, he did.”

“Derek, I’m sorry,” is the first thing Stiles says sadly when he accepts Derek’s FaceTime call. After seven months, Derek has learned not to take Stiles’ dramatics too seriously, especially when they start with such a heart-stopping tone. “I’ve decided to lean into it, okay? At first it was just an accident, you know? You’re around Scott and Allison or—god forbid—Scott _without_ Allison, which is even worse, and it just slips out. It seems normal. You think, no, you’re better than that, you don’t need to stoop to such lows, but then you’re talking to your super hot, incredibly smart boyfriend and it’s right there on the tip of your tongue, waiting. It _wants_ to be said, Derek, that’s the thing, so I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind, to let the road lead me where it may, and embrace it. RIP to my creativity, to my sense of adventure, to everything you loved about me.”

“I have no clue what you’re talking about,” he says, trying to keep the phone at a decent angle—something Stiles clearly does not care about considering he’d dropped his phone in his lap and isn’t even looking at the screen. There’s a controller in his hand and another shoulder knocking into his—not unusual for Saturday mornings. Derek knows he’ll go back into his own hotel room whenever he finishes his game, and he doesn’t mind; it’s nice to get to know Stiles’ friends in some way, even if it’s usually just watching them tackle each other over the video. 

“I know you don’t,” Stiles says. “It’s okay—mother _fucker_ I’m gonna whoops your ass Jackson, swear to God dude it’s on—sorry, Derek. Anyway. I know you don’t understand, and that’s okay because I love you anyway, babe.”

He stays quiet for a moment, waiting for Stiles to continue, and groans when it hits him. “Did you just monologue me because you like calling me a socially acceptable term of endearment and don’t want to stop?”

“Uh,” Stiles says, “that’s—that sums it up, yep.”

“You’re so weird,” Dere says, letting the affection he feels in his chest show through his tone when he adds, lips curling into a smile, “sweetheart.”

The small, pleased smile that spreads over Stiles’ face is priceless and Derek grins back at him helplessly until there’s a crash, Jackson cheers, and the look on Stiles’ face changes to outrage briefly before the phone goes clattering to the ground.

He listens to Stiles howl about how Jackson cheated, laughter as they scuffle around and then Derek’s looking at Scott’s face. “Hey bro,” Scott says, and flips the camera around so Derek can see Stiles putting Jackson in a headlock. “Let’s see how your boy is doing. I’ve got $20 on Jackson, you in?”

Derek laughs; he’s used to this by now. “I’m obligated to go with Stiles, aren’t I?”

“Hey,” Stiles calls, and yells when Jackson flips him over his shoulder and drops down on top of him. “ _Not the arm_ you goddamn nightmare, I’m gonna fuck you up so hard dude—”

“We’re jumping straight to the homoerotic threats,” Scott says. “Stiles usually saves those for when he knows he’s gonna lose—which is always, Derek, I don’t care what he’s told you, he hasn’t won a fight against Jackson since we were fifteen and that’s only because he swung his bat into Jackson’s head accidentally as he was storming away so I’m not sure it counts.”

“I’d rather ride _It’s A Small World_ a thousand times in a row than ride your dick,” Jackson grunts, and Stiles slaps him on the side of the head. 

“I said fuck you _up_ , Jesus—”

“Are they always like this?” Derek asks, and Scott flips the camera back so Derek can see him. “I was going to see if Stiles wanted to invite you guys over next time you were home but I’m not sure my furniture can handle it.”

“Just when there’s a competition,” Scott says, “so keep the video games hidden and you should be good. That’d be fun though, man, I’ve been dying to meet you. Allison says you’ve kept training with her, isn’t she the greatest?”

“ _No_ ,” Stiles and Jackson yell in unison, and the next thing Derek sees is the phone getting wrenched out of Scott’s grasp. “Sorry, no, we just had to listen to thirty-seven minutes of Scott talking about how beautiful Allison will be when she’s pregnant and I can’t handle it anymore. See you later, losers. Pick somewhere for lunch, I’d rather chew my own hand off than order room service again. Sorry, Derek. How’s the first day without Laura?”

“Not so different yet,” Derek says. He slouches down on the couch and props the phone up on the pillow next to him, laying down on his side. “Feels more like a long shift than her being gone—it’ll probably sink in next week. She texted a picture of her and William in their new place though, she seems happy.”

“Are you looking for a new place to live? Isaac’s old roommate doesn’t live far from you and I think he’s still got a room open,” Stiles says, and Derek frowns as he watches Stiles open his door and immediately throw himself across the bed. 

“Why would I look for a new place? This is my house,” he says. “I told you Laura lived with me, didn’t I?”

“Yeah? But I thought—wait, it’s _your_ house? You own it?”

He remembers, then, not correcting Stiles’ assumption that it was Laura’s place back in the winter when he’d joked about Laura making him sleep in the basement because he hadn’t wanted to explain that actually, if he never wanted to work a day in his life he wouldn’t have to thanks to a trust fund that his grandparents left him. 

But then—“Is that why you’ve insisted on paying for everything?” he asks, frowning. “You thought—”

“I thought you were on a public school teacher’s salary, yeah,” Stiles says, absolutely no shame at all. “What’s you do, develop an app? Solve a Millenium problem?”

“No, I—Millenium problem? That’s—no,” he says, shaking his head, grinning. 

Stiles peers at him for a moment. “Okay … personal escort for the rich and famous?”

“You think I was a hooker?”

“Hot enough to be one,” Stiles says. “Teenage soap opera star turned reclusive math teacher? Sued Dunkin Donuts because their shitty coffee was too hot? Found a buried treasure?”

Derek laughs, turning to bury his face into the pillow, lifting his head just enough to see Stiles’ grinning face when he looks back at the phone. “Born into a wealthy family is going to really disappoint you, isn’t it,” he says, and Stiles laughs. 

“Gotta say I prefer that over my next guess, which was mob boss. But I gotta go soon, we’re gonna get lunch before work. I’ve been pushing hard for Italian but technically it’s Danny’s pick today so we’re probably gonna end up with barbecue or something. I’ll slide into your DMs though, don’t worry.”

“Can’t wait,” Derek says; he means it to be sarcastic, but utterly fails at the delivery and it comes out stupidly hopeful. “Have a good day.”

“Love you,” Stiles says, and blows him a kiss.

**Derek:** When’s your next day off?  
 **Stiles:** i think in 2 or 3 weeks lemme check  
 **Stiles:** 3rd and i’m all yours baby  
 **Derek:** I thought I’d be nice if we went somewhere with your friends. I’d like to meet them.  
 **Stiles:** jackson can’t, lydia’s parents are in town, but scotty’s down. he wants to know if he can bring allison and i suggest saying no unless you want to bear witness to their disgusting sappiness  
 **Stiles:** wait you mean them right or do you mean ALL of them because uh  
 **Stiles:** they’re a fucking lot, dude  
 **Stiles:** i think just jackson and scotty would be better  
 **Stiles:** j says if you wanna do breakfast on the 8th he could come  
 **Derek:** Breakfast sounds good. Jackson’s important to you, I’d like to meet him.   
**Stiles:** i swear i’ll break up with you if you tell him that d i am NOT KIDDING

“I didn’t write it,” he says, sinking into Asha’s couch. “I tried, but I just deleted everything I wrote. It’s hard to think about what his reaction will be. I don’t want anything to change and I know it will.”

“Change isn’t necessarily bad,” Asha says. 

“It’s always felt bad,” he says. Except—except Stiles was a change. “Okay,” he says. “Can I have some paper?”

It’s just before 3:00am when Stiles stumbles into the house, disappears down the stairs, then shows up in front of Derek two minutes later, frowning. “Are you okay? Why are you awake?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he says, clicking the television off in the living room he’s rarely used since buying the house. “Too quiet. I think it finally hit me that Laura’s not coming back, I just kept waiting to hear the door today—I made enough dinner for both of us. I’m not used to being alone.” His exhaustion is making him honest, the two glasses of whiskey he’d had when he’s given up trying to sleep at 11:00pm easing the way. 

Stiles sits down next to him, and Derek leans in, turning his upper body and resting his head into Stiles’ shoulder. He doesn’t tell him about the letter he wrote, the way he’d gone home feeling hollow and wrung out, desperately needing someone to be with him and finding himself alone. It hurt more than he thought it would; he’d been alone for years, but he’d never had to deal with loneliness like this. 

“Do you want to try sleeping again now that I’m here?” Stiles asks, and Derek shivers as he trails his fingers up and down the back of Derek’s neck. “We could watch something if you want, but I’ll probably crash on you.”

“You work tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. There’s something in his voice that Derek can’t place, a ragged edge to his tone. “No off days this time around. I’m sorry. I don’t leave until next Monday morning though.”

“They work you too hard,” Derek says, turning his head to kiss him. No days off means he won’t even see Stiles until Saturday, will only have a few short overlapping hours of sleep until then. He’s not sure he can handle it. “I might stay with my parents this week,” he says.

“I—okay,” Stiles sighs, kissing his forehead. “Whatever you need, yeah, of course. Do you want me to leave?” He hesitates too long, because Stiles swallows hard and nods, his hair brushing against Derek’s temple. “Okay. Let me go grab my bag from downstairs and uh, you can just text me, if breakfast on Saturday is still good—”

It was probably inevitable that he messed this up eventually, he thinks. “How long is it going to be like this? You always gone, always working when you’re home?”

Stiles draws in a slow, shaking breath. “Derek,” he says quietly, “I thought you—this is what it’s like all the time,” he says. “There’s time off in the winter but it’ll be years—I’m so sorry. I thought I told you.”

He feels Stiles’ lips on his temple briefly before he stands up, and Derek watches him walk down the stairs slowly, shoulders hunched, and gets up to follow him when he’s out of sight. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, can’t regulate his emotions well enough to figure out what he really needs, but his heart aches at the thought of Stiles leaving. 

His footsteps are heavy on the stairs but Stiles doesn’t look up from where he’s sitting on the couch, head buried in his hands, and Derek feels the pressure in his chest push deeper. “Sorry,” Stiles says. His voice is raw; Derek wonders if he’s crying, if he’s feeling the same sinking feeling in his stomach, if his heart is pounding as loud as the one in Derek’s chest. “I just needed a minute, I’m getting my stuff—”

“Stay,” he says, and he pretends not to hear the way his voice breaks. “Stiles, come to bed. Please.” Stiles doesn’t move, so Derek walks over to him, reaches down and pulls wet hands away from his face. “Please.”

Stiles doesn’t brush him off, just stands up and looks at him in the soft light that comes from Derek’s bedroom. “I think you should probably take some time to think about it,” he says, “and I don’t want you to feel like you have to give me a place to sleep—you don’t want me here and that’s okay, it was inevitable, Isaac lives ten minutes away and I—”

“I don’t want you to go,” Derek says, and when he pulls him in, Stiles hooks his chin over Derek’s shoulder and wraps his arms around his neck tightly. He spreads his hands across Stiles’ lower back and presses him closer. “Don’t go.”

He pulls him into the bedroom, turns off the alarm on his phone, sends a quick email to Harris, and logs his absence into the system while Stiles strips out of his clothes and sits on the edge of the bed, staring down at the floor. 

“I can sleep on the couch,” he says, and Derek puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him backwards gently, climbing into bed and flipping the blankets back so Stiles can crawl in. 

He wants to say something, wants to tell Stiles about the letter, about how he’s been spiraling down in visions of Stiles leaving him after he reads it and spending the rest of his life trying and failing to be this happy again, but every time he takes a breath, he can’t. He leans back against his headboard, hand in Stiles’ hair and breathes slowly in and out until his heartbeat settles. “I’m good at pushing people away,” he says quietly. It’s easier in the dark, if he doesn’t look at Stiles, if he closes his eyes and pretends he’s talking to an empty room. “I don’t always know how to work through things like this, but I’m trying. So please just—don’t go.”

Derek spends the week filling all his downtime with his family, hangs around Erica and Boyd a little more often, doesn’t get home until he knows Stiles is on his way. They spend Saturday and Sunday morning quietly wrapped up in each other, and when Stiles is shoving his clothes into his bag on Monday morning, Derek finally hands him the letter. 


	12. The Pitch

“Stiles,” Scott calls urgently once he’s crossed half the distance to the mound, flipping his mask up, concern radiating from every line in his face. “Bro, that was a little too close to the chin there, you okay?”

Stiles grits his teeth; his elbow burns, his fingers hurt from the too-tight grip he’s had on the ball all night. He’s surprised he hasn’t been pulled ready; Finstock must know he’s distracted, that he’s rapidly losing control, his pitches drifting high and inside. He’s lucky that his team is backing him up tonight, that Jackson’s a double away from hitting for the cycle, that Danny had absolutely robbed Corey Seager of a three-run homer by scaling the left-field wall higher than he had any right to. “How much more time does Liam need?”

Scott’s eyes jump to the bullpen. “I think this is your last one, buddy,” he says. “Let’s just get through Bellinger, okay? Keep it low, Stiles, you’ve been throwing high all night, he won’t expect it.”

“I’ve been _trying_ to keep it low,” he hisses. He squeezes the rosin bag in his hand once more and tosses it to the side, closes his fingers around the ball Scott slaps into his hand. He bends over at the top of the mound, toes the rubber when he straightens up, and tries to focus as Scott hits his glove against Stiles’ chest.

“You can get through it, Stiles,” he says. “It’s just one batter. We’ve done it thousands of times.”

Stiles nods. Turner’s on first, Betts on third; he knows the infield shift is on against Bellinger, tries to remind himself that he’s got the advantage when he throws against lefties. All he needs to do is make him pull it into a grounder, because striking the guy out feels impossible right now. “Yeah,” he says, swallowing. “Scotty. It’s gotta be a fastball.”

“Dude—”

“I know,” he says, breathing in. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the umpire walking out towards them, and he shakes his head. “I don’t have it tonight, Scott, it’s all I can do. I’ll throw it hard, but it’s gonna be straight down the middle.”

“Hopefully,” Scott says, and winks at him as he pulls his mask back on. “Kidding, Stiles! You got this, bro!”

At least Scott always believes in him, he thinks. He breathes in, clears his head. Scott does exactly what Stiles told him not to do and signals for a curve; Stiles doesn’t bother shaking him off and just stares him down until he resets for a fastball. “Gonna hurt,” he whispers to himself, getting into his stance. Left foot on the rubber, into the stretch—Turner moves a half-step at first and Stiles changes his motion, grunting when he releases the ball early and it smacks into Ethan’s outstretched glove before he tags it against Turner’s shoulder.

“Out!”

Stiles breathes out and looks up, licks the sweat off his upper lip before rolling his neck and glancing over at the bullpen. He stretches his left arm out, twisting his wrist back and forth, desperate for some sort of relief. One more out and the inning’s over, one more out and Liam would be sufficiently warmed up, one more, one more. He centers himself again, breathes, looks over his right shoulder at Scott. 

He knows it’s a bad pitch as soon as he pulls out of the stretch, fingers slipping when he releases the ball too early and he watches for just a heart-stopping second of dread as it flies over Scott’s shoulder and to the backstop.

“ _Home_ ,” Jackson yells from behind him and Stiles takes off, racing Betts towards the plate, skidding to a stop just as Scott’s fingers close around the ball. He crouches low, braces himself for impact and holds out his glove, moving into the sweep before he’s even fully caught it, wrist knocking against a muscled thigh and then—

—pain shoots up his calf as he topples over, starfishing on the ground, gasping. His leg feels like it’s on fire as he jerks it off the ground and rolls his head to the side, stadium lights swimming in his watering eyes as the crowd hushes and his forehead drops back down to the dirt. Everything is a dull rush in his ears; he can’t hear anything over the beating of his own heart, can’t stop his hands from shaking.

Hands are on him a second later, gently pressing on his hips and shoulders, rolling him onto his back until Scott’s worried face comes into view. “I’m fine,” he says, “just get me off the field, Scott, just help me up—”

“You’re bleeding,” Scott says, frowning. “Stiles, just stay still, Parrish and Theo are on their way out.”

Stiles opens his mouth to argue and catches the sound of Jackson’s voice growing louder, urgent, and he shoots his hand out and grabs onto Scott because he knows that tone, knows that if he looked over he’d see Jackson an inch from Betts’ face. “Calm him down,” he says, “he’s gotta stay in, go tell him to shut the fuck up and come help me.”

“Gimme your phone,” he says an hour later, sitting on a couch in the clubhouse with his feet in Jackson’s lap, because of course Jackson had gotten pissed off, shoved Betts backwards into his manager, and got his ass tossed from the game. “Mine’s dead.”

“Gonna tell loverboy you got spiked in the leg?”

Stiles sighs. “ _No_ , I’m just gonna tell him we’re taking a break for a little bit. It’s a bruise, it’ll heal before I even see him again.”

Jackson hesitates, phone in hand, an unusually serious look on his face. “Stiles,” he says, “what the hell is happening, man? You know Finstock is about to send your ass down if you can’t get it together, right? The only reason he hasn’t is because Scott told him it’s your mom’s anniversary coming up.” 

He lifts his head and lets it bang against the arm of the couch a few times. Scott’s well-meaning, but Stiles would rather have just told Finstock that his focus was shot and have it over with; no wonder he’s been edgy around Stiles lately. “Derek and I had a weird week,” he says, turning his head so that he could watch the game on the television anchored to the wall. “He, uh—well, I don’t really know what happened. He asked how long my schedule would be like this and—”

“—and you still didn’t tell him, I’m guessing—”

“—and when I told him that this wasn’t a temporary thing,” he continues on, swallowing hard against the memory of Derek’s shoulder sagging as he rested at Stiles’ side, “he sorta shut down. And then we didn’t have any off days so I barely saw him until the weekend and then it was like—he acted normal, just really quiet, and then gave me this letter to read when I left but told me to wait until I had time to talk to read it.”

Jackson’s hands settle on either side of the ice pack strapped to Stiles’ leg and he squeezes gently. “What’d it say?”

“I haven’t read it,” Stiles says, knocking Jackson’s hand away when he reaches over to flick his cheek. “Ow, dude, injured person here. I was gonna read it the night before we go home so I can have some time to process whatever it says before I talk to him.”

“Stiles,” Jackson says, “did it occur to your dumb ass that you might not be so fucking distracted if you just read it already?” Stiles opens his mouth, ready to argue because of _course_ it had occurred to him, but it also had occurred to him that he may be even more distracted and that discretion was the better part of valor, so he had waited. But Jackson just shakes his head and adds, “read it when we get back or I’ll tell Lydia.”

Stiles breathes in, thinks about arguing, and gives up, groaning when sees Aiden miss an easy blooper at second on the screen. “I fucking hate you,” he says. “Give me your phone.”

Derek doesn’t answer; not that Stiles thought he would, it’s nearing midnight in New York and he works in the morning. He gets his voicemail and blows an obnoxious kiss into the phone. “Hey babe, just had an unexpected break and I wanted to call you because we’re heading to the airport soon. Uh, Jackson and Scott said they’re still good for breakfast when we get back home and Danny’s apparently invited himself along, too, so this is going to turn wildly out of control at any minute. I’m thinking about just inviting Isaac along myself so he won’t be hurt when he finds out the rest of us went without him. I’ll try to charge my phone on the plane and text you once we get to—Jackson, where—Arizona. Oh shit, that will be nice, the hotel we stay at has a great pool. Okay, uh, I hope you sleep well. Goodnight, love you.”

He hangs up, then deletes his outgoing call from the log in case Jackson—or, God forbid, Lydia—gets any ideas, and tosses the phone back. “Thanks, Jacks,” he says. “And I still think it was fucking stupid to get in Betts face when you could have easily gotten that double but—it makes my heart all warm and fuzzy, man. I love you.”

“Theo,” Jackson calls lazily, “something’s wrong with Stiliniski, he’s spewing sap everywhere.”

“Fuck off, I’m trying to be nice here,” he says, but there’s no bite to his words.

“I don’t always hate you, Stiles,” Jackson says, and Stiles beams.

He doesn’t read the letter that night. He shoves his backpack next to him on the plane besides his propped up leg, thumbs the corner of the envelope in the front pocket until it’s soft against his skin, a soothing back and forth motion that he repeats until the plane lands and he limps off on his crutches. Theo massages his arm and rewraps his leg in his room, muttering under his breath about idiots who don’t know how to block the plate correctly, and Stiles is too sore and on edge to to give Derek’s words the attention they deserve so he sets it on the nightstand and stares at it until Scott walks into his room, turns all the lights off, and flops down in bed with him.

“Go away,” Stiles says. He’s itchy and uncomfortable; he hates laying on his back, but Theo’s orders were to keep his leg elevated and he’s got no other choice. He knows they’re worried about his next start, that they don’t want to cut the rotation short or call up if they can help it, but the knowledge does nothing to soothe him.

Scott ignores him and inches over until he’s close enough to throw an arm over Stiles’ stomach. “You’re no Allison, but you’ll do,” he mutters sleepily, and Stiles snorts.

“Yeah, well, you’re a poor substitute for Derek,” he says, but he stretches his head over to lean against Scott’s anyway, and falls asleep. 

He wakes up later than normal, alone in his room, to a knock at the door. Theo’s on the other side, kit in his hand, unimpressed look on his face when he realizes that Stiles has just rolled out of bed at nearly noon. “We got in late,” Stiles grumbles, swinging himself awkwardly on his crutches towards the bathroom. “Can you get Scott in here? I need help.”

“You know I’m capable of helping you into the shower,” Theo says, but he leaves the room again and Stiles wrestles with his clothes until Scott slides through the door.

“Theo tell you you’re staying behind today?” he asks, kneeling down to unwind the compression band from Stiles’ leg. “Skip said Isaac could stay with you, if you want. I think Isaac wants you to agree just so he can use the pool without Danny trying to shove his face underwater.”

Stiles is too busy wincing to laugh. The bruise on his leg is dark and ugly, deep pinpricks showing where the spikes had dug into him. “This shit is not gonna be healed by next week,” he groans. 

“Let’s wait for Theo to make the medical decisions,” Scott says, pulling him up to standing. He helps Stiles into the shower, sits on the counter making inane conversation—and at the very end, as he loops his arm under Stiles’ shoulder to help him walk into the room, says, “Derek’s worried about you, have you called him yet?”

Stiles stares at him. “Derek’s—why’s Derek worried, Scott?”

“Because we wanted to let him know you were okay,” Scott says, “but I didn’t realize that you hadn’t told him you got hurt, so he asked what happened and I said you’d just been your usual clumsy self and banged into a table. Wasn’t sure what else to say, dude, it’s not like I could tell him the truth.”

“I’m kind of caught up on you _calling him in the first place_ ,” Stiles says, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Why—did you take his number from my phone? Dude. Breach of privacy, you can’t even begin to imagine the shit I’m gonna start sending to Allison now.”

Scott rolls his eyes before turning his back and digging through Stiles’ bag. “He gave me his number in case there was an emergency,” he says, and Stiles is so stupidly touched that Derek would want to be called that he forgets to be angry for a moment. “Don’t start, Stiles, he at least deserves as much of the truth as your stupid ass wants to tell him.”

Scott leaves shortly after, promises to bring him back lunch from wherever they go, and Stiles sits mostly quietly while Theo scrutinizes his leg and promises to send in a massage therapist for his arm. He’s never missed going to the ballpark on game day, has never sat in a hotel room while his team left him behind, slouched pathetically on the bed because of a fucking _bruise_. He’s halfway towards making up his mind to throw a fastball right at Betts’ face the next time he sees him when his phone rings and Derek’s face pops up. “I hope Scott didn’t make it sound like I’m dying because it’s just a bruise,” he says when he answers. “Hurt to walk today, so I took a day off.”

“Do you need anything? I can get you lunch delivered,” Derek offers, and Stiles feels like his heart is going to melt right out of his chest. 

“Nah, I’m good, the boys are gonna bring me back something in a minute,” he says. “But you’re making me feel all warm and gooey, Derek, and it’s making me want cookies. I should text Scott and guilt him into finding some for me.”

Derek laughs, and the sound eases the tension in Stiles’ chest. “I’m not sure you would have to do much guilting, he doesn’t seem like the type to say no.”

“He absolutely is not,” Stiles says. He taps his fingers against his thighs, looks at the letter on his nightstand, and makes up his mind. “So, hey, uh—the subway series—I’ll be in town for it. I thought maybe I could, uh, get us tickets and you could see me.” He cringes, shakes his head at his own stupid, awkward phrasing. “I’m not kissing you if you wear Yankees shit, though.”

“I doubt I’ll be able to see you in the glare of all that orange anyway,” Derek says, sounding pleased. “Yeah, I’d love to go with you, I didn’t think you had the day off.”

“I don’t,” he says, picking up the envelope and shaking it to one side before tearing it open. “I’ll work something out. Hey, I’m—I’m gonna read your letter now, okay? You want to stay on the phone or you want me to call you back?”

There’s a long silence that Stiles itches to fill until Derek says, “I’ll, uh—call me back. I’m on the subway and—”

“You know there’s nothing in here that’s gonna change us, right?” he asks, flipping the pages back and forth. There are more of them than he thought; five double sided pieces of notebook paper filled with Derek’s neat handwriting, letters small and cramped like he couldn’t bear the feeling of them taking up space. “I love you no matter what it says in here, Derek. I swear.”

“I—” Derek’s breathing becomes steadier, more intentional, like he’s forcing himself to keep count of the breaths he’s taking. “I’m working on knowing that. Just call me back.”

Stiles lets the call disconnect, drops his phone onto his lap, and flips the pages back to the front. He wiggles back into the pillows propping him up, gets comfortable, and begins to read.

_I met Kate when I was 15, and I thought I was in love with her_. 


	13. June

**Stiles:** not gonna see you til just before first pitch, sorry babe  
**Stiles:** just letting you know i’m not standing you up and also you don’t need to get there too early

Derek’s probably more excited than he should be to watch the Yankees/Mets game with Stiles—he does wish this one was at Yankee Stadium, wishes he could show Stiles his favorite place to sit, the best places to get food and cheap beer, convince him to wear Derek’s sweatshirt—but all he feels when he gets Stiles’ text at lunch is an overwhelming sense of relief. 

He’s been slowly redecorating the upstairs since Laura moved almost a month ago, getting rid of the furniture she and William had picked out that he didn’t care for and repainting the rooms (he wasn’t sure what she was thinking when she painted the bedroom yellow, for God’s sake); he’d managed to get Stiles’ opinions by pretending he wanted to buy something for Laura’s nursery and taking him to a furniture store—an hour and half later, Derek had been given commentary about every single item in the place, from the bed frames (“who wants to live like they’re in the Game of Thrones set?”) to the blankets artfully arranged on the couches (“wow if I never wanted to be comfortable again, I’d definitely get this one”). 

Cora had been overjoyed when he’d let it slip, but Derek maintains that he’s not asking Stiles to live with him—mostly because he thinks Stiles probably already does, given that he has his own key and that the only time he spent elsewhere was when Derek had a cold. Stiles had apologized profusely, ordered him at least three gallons of soup from various restaurants, somehow had cold medicine and tissues delivered, and refused to come back until Derek swore up and down that he hadn’t coughed in the last twenty-four hours.

Derek had lied, because coughs hang around for weeks and he’s a _teacher_ , it’s just a part of his life, and because he’d missed Stiles after four days and refused to spend another night falling asleep on the phone when he could just fall asleep with him. 

All he has left now is waiting for the delivery of the furniture, which he had scheduled for today exactly three hours before Stiles had asked him to go to the game. Derek had kept the appointment because Stiles had thought he’d have an easier time getting the day off for the second game in the series, but then had switched last week to the first game, and it was too late to make any changes unless he wanted to wait another three weeks. Meeting Stiles when the Citi Field gates open for the game meant he’d only have an hour to get everything done—impossible, even though he’d paid extra for a firm time slot—but first pitch bought him enough time, because he’s pretty sure Stiles would insist on sleeping downstairs anyway if the mattress didn’t make it up. 

**Derek:** Sounds good. I’ll be there.  
**Stiles:** your ticket’s at will call  
**Stiles:** don’t complain at me when you see where we’re sitting  
**Derek:** Nosebleeds are fine, I’m sure there will be enough Yankee fans around for me to cheer with.  
**Stiles:** oh ha HA fucker  
**Stiles:** nevermind i’m taking your ticket back you can stay in the parking lot with the rest of the bleacher scum  
**Stiles:** so i’m gonna be upfront with you  
**Stiles:** allison and lydia are coming too  
**Stiles:** i figured you’d be okay with allison but you’ve never met lydia so just … brace yourself  
**Stiles:** if she’s mean to you it means she loves you  
**Stiles:** if she’s nice, you better run  
**Derek:** You won’t run interference?  
**Stiles:** funny you think that i have any control over that evil banshee whatsoever  
**Stiles:** gotta go love you

Stiles doesn’t answer his phone when Derek makes it to Citi Field, pushing through the crowd with his face turned up to read the section numbers as the Yankees are being introduced. He’d teased about upper deck seats but figured Stiles would try to get something good if he was seeing his beloved Mets play; he hadn’t realized that _something good_ to Stiles was the first row right next to the home dugout. He can see Allison’s dark, curly hair next to two open seats as he makes his way down the stairs, Lydia standing right next to her, leaning up against the netting that separates them from the field and chatting with a player, who makes brief eye contact with him and grins before disappearing into the dugout. 

“Stiles here yet?” he asks, dropping into the seat closest to Allison. He can switch when Stiles gets there if he wants, but he likes Allison, still trains with her weekly when Stiles and Scott are out of town, occasionally goes on long, winding runs through the city where they hardly say a word to each other.

“I imagine you’ll see him shortly,” she says, reaching over and squeezing his hand. “Have you met Lydia?”

“No,” he says, raising his voice over the music of the introduction video that starts up on the centerfield scoreboard to be heard. 

Lydia leans over and hugs him, kisses his cheek, and looks at him appraisingly. “I’d almost thought Stiles made you up until Jackson had breakfast with you last week. You can do amazing things with technology these days.”

“Don’t be mean to Stiles in front of his boyfriend, Lydia,” Allison says, shaking her head. “Hush, I want to see the line-up.” He pulls out his phone to text Stiles but Allison closes her hand over his wrist and nods up at the screen. “Watch,” she says, smiling. “It’s a good intro.”

It’s—fine, he thinks, generic, the video swooping down and through the skyscrapers downtown, bleeding into black and white videos of older generations of Mets teams. There’s Mike Piazza and Tom Seaver—typical, he thinks, the only players anyone who’s not already a Mets fan could recognize—scenes from the World Series crowds from 2015 before the current players start to show up, not that Derek recognized any of them. It’s like every baseball highlight video; players diving for the ball, pushing off the wall with their glove up, a glove covering a pitcher’s face until they wind up—

He blinks, certain for a second that it was _Stiles_ on the screen and he’s clearly seeing things—except the runner on first is Jackson, crouched low to take off, and it’s Scott’s face that shows up next, having a conference on the mound but the only thing Derek can see is the pitcher wearing a jersey that says _Stilinski_ and a big number 24.

Allison and Lydia are watching him, he discovers after he looks over at them for answers, because there is _no way_ he missed this for months. Lydia’s scrutinizing look is so intimidating that he focuses on Allison, who smiles gently at him. “Surprise,” she says, “your boyfriend is starting tonight.”

He doesn’t know what to say—doesn’t know what to think, his mind still stuck on the image of Stiles on the screen, gaze focused and intense. And then it hits him: Stiles working mostly at night, Jackson calling him a traitor for wearing Derek’s Yankees sweater, how he would sometimes flip _day off_ with _off day_ , his travel schedule, his preference for staying at home on his days off, how he would come home and wince at times when Derek would bump against his shoulder. Derek hadn’t _missed_ it, Stiles had kept it from him intentionally, had hidden this major part of his life from the time they’d met. 

“I need a minute,” he says; his gaze is pulled to the dugout but it’s clear except for a handful of people he doesn’t recognize at all. 

Stiles, Jackson, Scott, Allison—they’d all kept it quiet. Derek had spent the last weekend with god knows how many people on a major league baseball team, and he hadn’t even known it.

“Derek,” Allison says quietly, leaning in towards him as the video ends and the stadium PA starts reading out the line-up, “Stiles said he would understand if you left. He doesn’t want you to, but he _did_ want you to know he wouldn’t blame you.”

For a moment, he considers it. Derek doesn’t process things quickly—or well, most of the time—especially something that throws the past eight months of his life into question. But Stiles must have a reason for not telling him, and there is undeniably a small part of Derek’s mind that’s freaking out because his boyfriend is a baseball player.

In the majors.

Holy shit.

“My first crush was on Jorge Posada,” he says to Allison. “I used to tell my mom that I was going to marry a Yankee and travel around the world with them. Admittedly, I wasn’t very clear on the travel aspect of the game when I was ten.”

“Guess you’ll have to tell her you’re marrying a Met instead,” Allison says, and Derek laughs. “So if you’re not leaving—Stiles said you’d wear your Yankees stuff, but I thought you might like a jersey, just in case,” she says, pulling a folded up, home-white jersey out of the bag at her feet. “He doesn’t know I brought it, so if you’d rather not, we don’t have to tell him. I know how Yankees fans get—I was one.”

“Traitor,” he teases, reaching for the jersey. Stiles’ name is stitched onto the back, bright orange bordering the blue letters. 

“You know how it goes when you marry in,” she says. “Stiles joked about having a custom orange one made for you, though, and he doesn’t let go of ideas very easily so you should probably be aware that it’s in your future. I thought the pinstripes on this one might help the transition.” 

Scott’s name is called overhead and when she turns away to cheer he unbuttons the jersey and slips it on over his sweater. He’d left his obvious Yankees gear at home—there’s a World Series t-shirt under his black hoodie—because the last time Stiles refused to kiss him in Yankees gear he’d actually followed through, and Derek hadn’t wanted to tempt fate tonight. Allison’s elbow knocks against his and when he turns he catches sight of the dugout filling, and Jackson appears at the netting, eyes flicking over Derek and then grinning. “Stilinski, get your ass over here,” he yells over his shoulder, then looks back at Derek and says, “good to see you stayed, I was getting a little tired of listening to his hysterics.”

Stiles looks uncharacteristically nervous when he steps out of the dugout and into Derek’s line of sight—he’s balling up his hands, looking vaguely sick until he sees Derek and his face breaks out into a wide grin. Derek’s seats are set in-ground and even when he stands it only puts the field level at his waist, but Stiles crouches down without a problem and grips the netting that separates them with both hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says immediately. “I—thank you. For staying. If you want to go, though, if you’re mad—”

“I’m not going, Stiles,” he says. He starts to reach up, wants to reassure Stiles, and stops. Allison had no issues calling Stiles his boyfriend, but Derek has no clue what his teammates know or how comfortable Stiles is around them; Stiles shoots him a confused look but doesn’t say anything, and Derek continues. “I am a little mad, though—I can’t believe I have to cheer for the Mets now.”

There’s a beat of silence and then Stiles starts laughing, head tipping up to the sky as his body rocks forward. “I’ll give you some time to ease into it,” Stiles jokes, and he lets go of the net to crook a finger at Derek, beckoning him closer and whispering, “but if I beat your team tonight, I’m gonna fuck you while you wear that jersey.”

Derek can feel the flush on his cheeks immediately, and it grows worse when Jackson groans and says, “you’re not _nearly_ as quiet as you think you are, Stiles,” but Stiles just laughs again and winks at Derek. 

Watching Stiles pitch is like nothing he’s ever seen. He remembers watching him in the batting cage over the winter and being impressed by his timing and power, but watching Stiles on the mound is a different experience entirely. He’s nothing short of graceful, all his attention focused on Scott, his body still as he leans over to look at the signs, his motions smooth and powerful. He strikes out batter after batter, and between innings he sits in the corner of the dugout, head bent down in conversation with Scott, right arm moving animatedly. It’s not until he’s walking onto the dirt to hit that Derek has the sudden realization that he’s spent the last four months ragging on the Mets, and that Stiles wasn’t just talking about his team, he was talking about _his team_.

“Allison,” he says, watching Stiles take a practice swing in the on-deck circle, “how many times have I made fun of Stiles without knowing I was talking about Stiles?”

“Too many to count,” she says cheerfully. “He was very offended that you weren’t impressed with his home run off Strasburg on a full count. Oh, and the time you told him that pitchers should leave the fielding to infielders instead of faking a throw to first and catching a baserunner in a run down? That was Stiles. Jackson laughed for a month about that one and told him you were right.”

He groans, pushing his glasses up and rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Why didn’t he tell me sooner?”

“I’m really not sure,” she says, looking over at him. “He wouldn’t tell us. Danny actually won the bet we had going on because he figured you’d watch the game on television and see one of them, but Stiles was adamant that we keep it quiet until he was ready to tell you, and he didn’t seem like he had any intention until he got hurt two weeks ago and then all we could hear about was how he invited you to the game and you were going to break up with him and he was going to die old and miserable.”

“Young and miserable if he didn’t shut up,” Lydia interjects, looking up from where she was typing on her phone. “Even Scott was tired of it. Your boy is up, Derek.”

Stiles glances at him quickly as he leaves the on-deck circle, but lifts his bat and points it at Allison with a wink before walking up to home plate. “He got a home run after he did that the first time,” Allison says fondly, “and he’s too superstitious to stop now. Watch—you were impressed with him in the cages, but that’s nothing. He’s got a surprising amount of power behind him.”

Stiles takes the first pitch; Derek watches as his arms flex just before the ball crosses the plate but he doesn’t move, doesn’t even come close to swinging. He fouls off the second into the netting above them, sends the third into the seats behind first base into the upper deck, hits it into the same location on the fourth. He backs off the plate for a second, looking at Scott on the on-deck circle.

“You got it, buddy,” Scott calls, and Allison snorts.

“Scott’s his personal cheerleader,” Allison says. “Actually, Scott’s everyone’s personal cheerleader, but Stiles is the only one that seeks it out.”

It seems to work; Derek finds himself leaning forward as Stiles steps back into the box, wishing for the first time that Paxton would give up a home run. Jackson’s halfway to third when the bat cracks and Stiles takes off, ball lined deep into the left field corner; Jackson rounds third but Derek’s eyes are still on Stiles, going around the corner and heading towards second, dropping down into a slide as he hits the bag with his eyes on home plate, punching the air when Jackson comes barrelling across just a moment before Sánchez catches the throw. 

Derek doesn’t realize he’s cheering until Allison grabs his arm and tugs him back into his seat, laughing. “Didn’t take very long to drop that home team allegiance, did it?” she teases.

Lydia has them up and moving the moment the game ends, ushering Derek across an aisle and down into a tunnel, striding confidently through a maze of hallways until she pushes open a set of double doors and they’re standing in the Mets clubhouse. There are doors to either side and Jackson comes through one a moment later, heading straight towards Lydia and hugging her despite how she lifts up her arms to push him away. “You’re still sweaty and this is Alexander McQueen,” she complains. “Let me go.”

“Scott’s in the showers,” he says to Allison, “says he won’t be long.” He looks at Derek and jerks his head towards the door. “Come on, I’ll take you back.” Derek follows him, catches Danny and Isaac by their lockers and nods at them, walks through one room and then another until Jackson knocks on a partially open door and says, “Stilinski, your mail-order bride’s here,” and claps Derek on the shoulder before walking away.

Stiles is lying on a massage table; when Derek walks in he pops his head up, grins, and says, “Perfect, they sent a pretty one. Theo, this is Derek.” Theo, clearly used to dealing with Stiles, puts his hand on the back of Stiles’ head and pushes it back down while nodding at Derek. 

“Rest for five more— _rest_ , Stiles—and then you’re free to go.”

Stiles waits all of three seconds after Theo is gone to push himself up and sit down, swinging his feet off the table and looking at Derek with a mixture of excitement and apprehension. “So? Um, I’m not really sorry your team lost but uh, you don’t really look upset either, I’m sure you want to know what the hell is going on so I’m just gonna shut up and if you have any questions, um. I’ll tell the truth, I swear. I’m sorry I lied.”

“Can I kiss you?” Derek blurts out. It’s what he’s been wanting to do since he saw Stiles, and now that Stiles is sitting in front of him, shirtless and glistening with sweat, Derek isn’t sure how much longer he can keep his hands off him.

Stiles gives him a look of utter confusion, and then he blinks and it clears. “Oh— _oh_ ,” he says, looking past Derek to the open door. “If you want, yeah. They all know I’m bi, you don’t need to be worried about that. So’s Jackson and Ethan, and Danny’s gay—Jackson says we’re the gayest club east of the Mississippi because he’s sure there are at least—”

Derek cuts him off, sliding his hand into Stiles’ damp hair and leaning down to kiss him; it’s rougher than he means it to be but he can’t stop thinking about the power Stiles had tonight, couldn’t stop thinking throughout the game about how he knew what that body felt like against him and on top of him. He licks into Stiles’ mouth, crowding against him until Stiles brings his arms around Derek’s waist and slides closer, practically falling off the table.

“This isn’t resting,” Theo calls as he knocks on the door; Derek jumps back guiltily, but Stiles just laughs and flips Theo off. 

They should talk, of course they should, but the minute they walk in the door he drags Stiles upstairs and onto the bed, ignores the repeated questions about _what the hell are we doing up here_ because Stiles gets it as soon as he sinks down on his beloved mattress, and starts stripping him out of his clothes in between desperate kisses.

“Derek,” Stiles says, voice breaking, “Jesus, slow down, I’m—”

Derek kisses him again, slides his mouth down to bite at Stiles’ jaw and slips his thumbs under the waistband of Stiles’ sweats, tugging them down far enough for Stiles to kick them off. “Stiles,” he says, mouthing along his jawline and sucking his earlobe into his mouth, “remember that time I kept begging you to fuck me and you said you wanted it slow?”

“Very, _very_ fond memory,” Stiles says, wiggling his hands up Derek’s sweater and yanking until Derek sits up and lets him pull it off. “Oh, motherfucker, I knew you were wearing—oh _fuck_ —”

Derek slides his hand along Stiles’ cock, stroking lightly, fingers cupped so loosely they’re barely touching Stiles. He keeps it up as he bends back down and kisses him, slow and dirty as he lifts his hips up and lets Stiles push his underwear down. “You looked so good out there,” he whispers into his ear, tracing the shell with his tongue, grinding down with his hips when Stiles moans. “It doesn’t have to be tonight, I know you’re tired, but I want—” he swallows, bites down hard on Stiles’ neck and takes a deep breath. “I want it rough, I—I want to feel what you can do—”

“Tonight’s good, really, _really_ good,” Stiles says, “I can definitely—just give me like half an hour—”

Derek grins against his shoulder, tightens his grip on Stiles cock and sucks a mark onto his skin when he whimpers. “I’ll wear the jersey if you can make it now,” he says, and Stiles is pushing him away the next second, hands shoving at his shoulders until Derek sits up.

“Get the fucking jersey and bend over the bed,” Stiles says; his voice is raw, he’s staring at Derek with wide eyes as he scrambles off the bed, already breathing hard. “You’ll tell me—if you want to stop, Derek, you have to tell me—”

He grabs Stiles’ wrist and pulls him close, slides a hand onto his cheek and kisses him slowly, sucking Stiles’ bottom lip between his, pulling him close. “I will,” he says, “but don’t hold back.” He shrugs on the jersey, leaves it hanging open, too impatient to button it and allows Stiles to push him over the edge of the bed, face down. 

Stiles runs a hand down his back, tracing over the letters of the jersey; Derek jumps when he leans down and licks at his ear as two fingers push into him, stretching him open. “You look good like this,” Stiles whispers, fingering him with more insistence than he normally does. Derek shifts on the bed, rocking his hips back and trying to get fiction on his aching cock. “Jesus, Derek, keep doing that, you look so fucking good right now.”

Stiles adds another finger and he groans; he doesn’t even feel like himself, lost his sense of self-consciousness when Stiles started talking to him, but he feels desperate as he digs his hands into the edge of the mattress and shoves his hips backwards, working himself hard on Stiles fingers and still wanting more. “Stiles, please—”

Stiles fingers him roughly as he straightens up and Derek groans, pulls his arms above his head and twists his hands into the sheets. He feels Stiles pull his fingers out and then the head of his cock presses against him and in one swift movement Stiles has him by the hips and pulls him backwards. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t give Derek any time to adjust, just keeps one hand curled around Derek’s hip and uses it to counter his movements, pulling Derek back against him relentlessly, his other hand pressed hard against his shoulder, holding him down. 

Derek can’t control anything at this pace, doesn’t _want_ to control anything, just wants to feel what Stiles can do to him. He focuses on the feeling of Stiles using his body, how easily he can pull Derek against him, gasps when the angle changes slightly and his fingers tighten their hold on the blankets involuntarily. Stiles is talking, urging him to touch himself, shifting Derek around until he’s on his knees, but Derek can barely hear him over the sound of the blood rushing through his veins and into his head. 

The hand on his back is sliding down, curving around his hip and around his cock; Stiles doesn’t stoke him but holds his arm still as he fucks Derek into his grip, and Derek forgets to breathe when his body starts to tense up, a rush of pleasure overtaking him as he comes, noises coming out of his own mouth that he doesn’t recognize as Stiles’ thrusting becomes frantic until he slumps over onto Derek’s back.

“I think,” Stiles pants a moment later, “that you’re actually trying to kill me.”

Derek hums, reaches back for his hand and tangles their fingers together. “Guess I’ll have to try harder,” he says, and Stiles snorts and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. 

“Okay, it’s freaking me out that you don’t have any questions,” Stiles says later, after Derek has cleaned them up and given in to Stiles’ insistence that they order Chinese food, which he promptly drops on Derek’s new duvet. “You haven’t even demanded to know why I didn’t tell you, you just brought me home and accosted me like a caveman.”

“You could just tell me why you didn’t tell me,” Derek says, holding a bite of fried gyoza out on a fork, because Stiles is no longer allowed to feed himself in bed. “Nothing’s stopping you.”

“You don’t want to know?”

Derek makes a face at how he talks around his food and sighs. “I don’t want to _push_ ,” he corrects. “I hated all the questions people had after Kate. I figure if you want to tell me, you’ll tell me.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “First, not the same at _all_. Second, I just don’t know where to start. You wanna know my stats? How pissed off I am that the Mets won the World Series four years ago and promptly started sucking again right after? Should I tell you about how I was an All-Star my rookie year and Isaac can fucking suck it because I deserve to be the number one starter and it’s only a personal tragedy—well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, it sucked but I don’t think I can call it a tragedy—anyway, dude, you know how much I talk. We’ll be here for years if you make me try to guess. At least ask me like, three questions.”

Derek holds out another bite for him. “Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

“I _knew_ it,” Stiles crows, taking the bite and swallowing it almost whole. “You’re the only one who never wanted to talk to me about baseball. You talked about the Yankees, but—when you talked to me, when you asked me questions, it was just about me. It wasn’t about how I nearly hit Max Scherzer in the head because he said something shitty about Danny, or if I thought I’d finally break my dry spell and get a hit. You don’t sit there and worry about me getting traded, or obsessively chart pitch locations because you’re convinced we can do it better than Statcast. My friends—I love them, but they’re _all_ baseball players or baseball-adjacent. Scotty, Jackson, and I have played together since we were four years old and in t-ball. Danny and Isaac went to college with us. Baseball _is_ my life, and I love it, but when my dad got shot and I started tanking I realized that if I lost baseball, I lost everything.”

“They’d still be your friends,” Derek interrupts, and starts moving all the containers of food off the bed when Stiles presses the heel of his hand against his eyes. “Stiles, hey, you—”

“You know the schedule,” Stiles says. “It’s not a great one for maintaining anything, and they’d put their relationships first. Which they should, I’m not saying I blame them. But then I met you, Derek, and you just wanted to know about _me_ , and for the first time … there was no pressure, with you. I wasn’t a major leaguer, I was just some guy you met on Words With Friends who couldn’t win to save his life.”

“You haven’t exactly been some guy for a long time,” he says, reaching out his arm so Stiles can scoot over and lean against him. He draws him close and kisses his temple, reaches up and scratches his fingers into Stiles’ hair.

“I figured you wouldn’t stick around once I went to spring training,” Stiles says, blowing out an amused breath. “Allison said you would, you know that? I spent a week whining about it—Lydia tried to get me to break up with you because I was distracted—don’t make that noise, it was a week into training and all I was doing was running endless miles around the warning track and throwing like ten pitches every other day. I needed a distraction—but Allison told me that you’d keep me around, because you had started training with her. She thought you were a good match for me, you know, I can be a little much for a lot of people but you never seemed to mind. You know she had to clear all our shit off the walls of the gym just so you didn’t accidentally see pictures or Scott’s jerseys?”

“She’s a good friend,” he says, and yawns against the top of Stiles’ head. “You know I have to get up for work in four hours, right?”

“Oh, shit,” Stiles says, “you know I never know what day it is, Derek, you gotta tell me this stuff. Hit the lights, I’ll toss the food in the morning.”

He rolls his eyes but does as directed, lets Stiles’ shuffle close and press his nose into Derek’s neck once they’re laying down, arm draped over his stomach. “Hey,” he says quietly, “you know I’m not mad, right? I was surprised, but never mad.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stiles says; Derek feels him kiss the underside of his jaw near his ear before Stiles yawns. “Those are Allison’s season tickets, by the way. She says you can come whenever you want. Just an offer.”

“Tell her I’ll be there tomorrow,” Derek says, and kisses his head once more before he falls asleep. 


	14. July

There’s a part of Derek that expects things to change, but nothing really does until school lets out for the summer near the end of June and his schedule suddenly affords him an abundance of free time. He starts spending more time with Allison, feeling a little guilty about using her seats until she tells him she normally goes alone and is happier to have the company; they fall into a routine of spending the first three innings at the seats while they eat ballpark food, relocating to lean against the chain link fence separating the concourse from the bullpen for the middle three in order to heckle Stiles, who spends his non-starting days making mayhem with the other pitchers, and end back in the seats to tease Scott. She shows up at his house the day Stiles has a scheduled start in Chicago with deep-dish pizza, and when she finds out that Stiles is starting in Philly the day after Derek has to submit final grades, she plans a road trip for them and he finds himself singing along loudly to 80’s music as they drive.

Scott catches sight of them behind the visitor’s dugout almost as soon as they sit down, and Stiles looks over at him in surprise before shaking his head and returning to his conversation with Parrish, but he keeps the small, sweet smile on his face until the game starts.

The Mets win and Derek and Allison go out with them to celebrate at a bar, and in the early hours of the morning Derek fucks Stiles into and right off the hotel bed. Stiles hits his head on the nightstand on the way down and laughs until he cries, then demands Derek fuck him against the wall due to “concussion protocol”.

Derek does, but Stiles, it turns out, is heavier than he looks, and they end up on the floor not much later.

There are other things: he starts watching the Mets far more frequently than the Yankees, checks the stats in the mornings when he’s reading the news; Stiles starts spending time outside of the house with him and Derek adjusts to how strangers occasionally come up and congratulate him or ask for his autograph; he comes home one day to paint fumes overwhelming the house and walks downstairs to find that the wall of his former living room has been painted an orange so bright that his eyes hurt (Stiles is in Atlanta, but there’s somehow a post-it note on the coffee table that says _surprise, motherfucker_ in his handwriting, sitting on top of a giant vinyl Mets decal); and a lot of royal blue starts showing up in his wardrobe.

Stiles makes him promise not to make any plans around the All-Star break and Derek assumes he’ll want to go to support Scott, who Jackson insists was voted in by teenage girls because of his pretty face, but Stiles wakes them up in the morning of the first day, throws a Mets-branded duffle bag at him with a grin that borders on evil, and tells him to pack. 

“For the stadium?” he asks stupidly, still trying to wake up. It’s not yet 5:00am, and he’s having trouble figuring out why Stiles is awake after only five hours of sleep.

“For our trip, Derek,” Stiles says; he sounds exasperated but he’s smiling, yanking shirts out of Derek’s dresser and throwing them at the bed before chucking balled up socks at Derek’s face with deadly accuracy.

“Our trip?”

“Derek, babe,” Stiles says, sighing, “go get coffee. I’ll do this. No orange, of course.” Derek raises his eyebrow and Stiles sighs, “ _fine_ , I swear, no orange. Shower. Coffee. Be human and ready to go in forty-five minutes.”

Derek isn’t actually sure he’s awake forty-five minutes later, but he’s slumped by the bedroom door with two cardboard cups of coffee in hand when Stiles pulls a packed bag out of the closet. “When did you pack that?” Derek asks, holding out one of the travel mugs and slinging the duffle over his shoulder. “That wasn’t there yesterday, was it?”

“I ran home and got some new clothes when you went to the gym with Allison yesterday morning,” Stiles says, and Derek stares at him.

He blames the early hour for what comes tumbling out of his mouth—5:32am is too early for him to be awake and functioning during the summer. Derek fakes being a morning person during the school year out of necessity, but his conversion back to night owl is swift as soon as the final bell rings—“What do you mean, home?”

Stiles raises an eyebrow. “Uh, Scott’s? I told you I’m living with him and Allison—”

“Since _when_?” Derek asks, backing out of the room and ducking into the bathroom to make sure Stiles hadn’t accidentally left any of his toiletries behind. 

“Since I got back to New York in January, dude. Remember the whole ‘I’m technically homeless’ thing? I guess I technically am still homeless but all my stuff is there and my mail gets delivered there—well, there and Beacon Hills—anyway. Homeless,” Stiles says, grinning, but then he tilts his head and narrows his eyes for a moment before his lips quirk up into a smile. “Derek,” he says, blocking Derek from getting down the stairs with his body and putting his hand on Derek’s upper arm, “am I living _here_?”

“You have a side of the bed,” Derek says. He’d assumed Stiles _knew_ he was living there, and it’s embarrassing, honestly, to know that Stiles didn’t have a clue that Derek had been happily playing house. “Half the dresser drawers are yours—”

“I thought you just needed to go shopping—”

“You buy groceries every week—”

“I eat a lot!”

“I let you paint the rec room orange,” he says, frowning. 

He takes a step back but Stiles just moves with him and pulls him in closer with an arm around his neck. “Technically I ambushed you with that one and you just haven’t changed it yet,” Stiles says, and Derek rolls his eyes but hugs him back, keeping his coffee cup steady behind Stiles’ back. “Do you want me to? Move in?”

Derek sighs and when Stiles moves to usher them down the stairs, he gestures to everything around them. “Stiles, I moved everything up here so there would be room for you. One of the closets in the bedroom is yours, half the shelves are yours, I only bought the stuff you said you liked, I set up the extra bedroom as a guest room so your dad could come stay—I _let you paint the fucking wall orange_ ,” he says again, because honestly, that’s the best proof he has. “ _Yes_ , I want you to move in, I’m not sure how much more clear I could make that.”

Stiles has stopped on the stair below him and is looking up at him with a mixture of amusement and awe, but he bursts out laughing at Derek’s last statement, grabs Derek by the shirt collar and yanks him down to kiss him. “You could have _asked_ , you idiot,” he says fondly. “God, I want to fuck you all over this house now, you know that? But we have a plane to catch—this is terrible timing, Derek. When you ask me to marry you, you better make sure we’re alone and definitely not in public. I’m gonna suck your dick on the plane, though.”

“What—” 

“No time to waste, we’re already late,” Stiles says, and Derek lets himself be pulled out of the house and into a waiting car, still stuck on how easily Stiles talked about marrying him to even register what else he’d said.

The plane lands them in Burlington, Vermont, land of freedom and unity, and apparently, Stiles heckling minor leaguers like it’s going out of style. Stiles had decided on surface over depth and had booked them three different hotels for their three nights—”like a road trip you need a plane to get to”—and after they spend the day looking at art galleries and eating so much seafood that Derek was worried Stiles would be sick, Stiles had pulled two Lake Monsters tickets out of his back pocket with a grin.

“Thought I’d actually watch a baseball game with you for once, considering the last time I invited you was actually just me trying to impress you before you decided to break up with me for lying about my job,” he says, and Derek throws an arm over his shoulder and doesn’t bother to temper his excitement. 

Despite having just ate, Stiles insists on buying popcorn and Derek resigns himself to listening to him complain later about a stomach ache—until he realizes that the popcorn is mostly for Stiles to throw in the direction of the field as he gleefully heckles the players. It’s not abuse—he says nothing about their playing skills, doesn’t curse them out or make fun, he just … yells.

Constantly.

Derek kind of loves it.

The target of his shouting is the right fielder, Bautista, and Stiles is _relentless_. The only time he shuts up is when the pitcher sets up (which Derek, god help him, finds ridiculously charming) and then he’s right back to it the second the out is recorded or the play stops.

_“Hey Bautista, Star Trek or Star Wars?”_

_“Hey Bautista, you want me to get you a hot dog? You look a little hungry, man, maybe you should have a Snickers.”_

_“Hey Baustista, you know where I could find a Bank of America ATM?”_

Derek finally claps a hand over his mouth, well aware that some of the crowd around them is not enjoying Stiles’ one-man comedy show as much as he is, and distracts him by offering to take selfies to send to their friends, then buys him fried dough after Stiles pouts and bats his eyelashes at him and makes out with him in a shady corner behind the concession stand.

Derek has stopped trying to predict what sex with Stiles will be like. He tried, at first, to keep track of what Stiles did, what he seemed to like more, but gave up quickly when he realized that what Stiles liked most of all was when Derek stopped thinking so goddamn much and just did whatever he wanted. He likes Derek on his knees as much as he likes being bent over the bed, likes having Derek push him around as much as he likes to hold Derek down and wait for him to beg, has been known to switch between hard and fast to sweetly slow in a heartbeat, from riding Derek frantically to sitting in his lap and barely rocking against him before Derek could so much as blink. 

He likes to direct Derek, to use his words or tug on his hair to get what he wants, pushes at Derek’s body wordlessly until he’s arranged however Stiles wants him; sometimes he talks, whispers things in Derek’s ear that send a shiver up his spine or makes him thrust harder, makes him lose control—sometimes he holds full conversations, asking if they should get Greek or Ethiopian while he fucks Derek’s mouth, debates the merits of going out with Boyd and Erica rather than Scott and Allison while he licks his way up Derek’s back as he slides a third finger in. Sometimes he coaxes Derek to do the talking, whispers for Derek to tell him what to do and slides his mouth up and down Derek’s cock at a slow, steady pace, waiting for Derek to say something.

Sometimes, Derek does.

“More, God,” Derek says, one hand gripping Stiles’ hair and tugging while Stiles slides his mouth nearly to the base of Derek’s cock and sucks gently, fingers crooking inside him. “Fuck me, please, I need more, Stiles—”

Stiles pulls off him but pushes his fingers in harder, and Derek shoves his hips down. “Should get a toy,” Stiles says, leaning back down and licking the crease of his thigh, fingers still pushing in deep, “I wanted you to fuck my mouth.”

“Left it at home,” Derek says without thinking, because _yes_ , that’s exactly what he wants, needs to feel something fucking him deep while Stiles works his cock with his mouth. Stiles’ fingers slide all the way out of him and Derek groans, stops himself from reaching for him. “ _Fuck_ , Stiles, please just—”

“What do you _mean_ you _left it at home_ ,’ Stiles demands, mouth open in apparent outrage, hand still on his own dick like he’s forgotten what he was doing. “You have one?”

Derek reaches down and stokes himself slowly, dropping his head back onto the pillow, hips stuttering forward; Stiles’ expression changes slightly, lips parting more as his tongue darts out and licks his bottom lip and his eyes track Derek’s movements. “ _Stiles_ ,” he says—Stiles has been teasing him for nearly an hour and Derek wants to come so badly it hurts.

Stiles blinks and looks up at him, pulls at Derek’s hips until he’s where Stiles wants him. He pushes Derek’s knees up as he slides into him and leans over; Derek’s always felt a little awkward in his position but it lets Stiles fuck him deep, which is exacly what he wants. Stiles pushes against him more and kisses him, rolling his hips in small movements, pressing deeper more than actually thrusting. “Derek,” he says, biting at Derek’s shoulder, “please, I swear to God, if you tell me what you do with it in very explicit detail, I will give you whatever you want. I’ll beg you, I swear.” He laughs and Stiles moans, rocking into him harder, hits it just in the right spot. “Tell me you fuck yourself with it, Derek.”

“I do,” he says; Stiles makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat and even though Derek wants, badly, for Stiles to move faster, to fuck him harder, he loves it when Stiles gets like this. “I thought you wanted to beg,” he adds, and Stiles huffs out a laugh and bites him again. 

“You think of me?”

“Of course I do,” Derek says, and Stiles shifts his weight and starts thrusting into him harder. “Sometimes—when you’re about to fall asleep you make these little noises, little moans, and—oh fuck, Stiles—it’s not enough to just get off, I want to feel you—”

“Oh fuck,” Stiles says; his breath comes in little gasps as he fucks Derek harder, and Derek pulls him down by the back of the neck to kiss him, sloppy and wet. “Please keep talking, please, please let me watch—”

He’s so close, takes in a breath as he moves Stiles’ hand to his cock, wants to feel Stiles touching. “I say your name,” he says, voice breaking when he comes, and Stiles makes a choked off sound and clutches him tighter, thrusting into him hard enough that Derek feels himself moving further up the bed until Stiles groans and drops into the space between Derek’s legs. 

“Just when you think you know a person,” Stiles says, bracing his hands on either side of Derek’s arms and pushing himself up enough to kiss him. “Jesus Christ, Derek, you’re a menace.”

He eases his legs down and smiles, brushes Stiles’ hair off his forehead and kisses him again, pressing his fingertips into Stiles’ hips as they make out slowly, softly biting at each other’s lips. “Come shower with me,” he says, rubbing his palms across Stiles’ back. “Or we might have time for a bath before dinner.”

“Fuck dinner, we can order in,” Stiles says. “Bath sounds good.”

“You told me that the focaccia with the whipped ricotta and honeycomb was too important to miss and to drag you out of this hotel room at any cost,” Derek reminds him. “You said that I had permission to tell Jackson to shave half your head if you didn’t listen.”

“God, I’ve got to stop punishing myself,” Stiles says, shaking his head. “Go start the bath. I’ll grab our book, read you a chapter while you relax.”

Derek looks down at him—flushed and happy, reaching out his hand to catch Derek’s and squeeze it before he grabs the book off the nightstand and starts flipping through it. Derek leans over and tilts Stiles’ chin up, kissing him softly. “You know what?” he says, and Stiles hums against his lips. “I really love you.”

The thing is, Stiles has been surprising Derek since he met him. Derek didn’t expect him to keep messaging him on Words With Friends, didn’t expect to ever see his face or hear his voice, never thought he’d go on more than one date with Derek, let alone be worried about Derek breaking up with _him_ seven months later. So it _shouldn’t_ surprise him, honestly, that Stiles had brought up a future proposal, because Derek hadn’t even considered it within the realm of possibility—and now it’s the only thing he can think about.

He thinks about a fall wedding in New York after the season is over, once they’ve been together longer, wonders if Stiles would prefer the Rainbow Room or renting out a barn in Westchester County as they tour a farm on their last day, Stiles feeding him pieces of fresh produce as they browse the country store. He imagines Stiles standing at an altar in a crisp blue suit with the skinny ties he prefers, looking across the aisle at Derek with the same look on his face that Derek sometimes catches when he looks up and sees Stiles staring at him unabashedly in their kitchen as he cooks them dinner. He holds his hand as they walk down small streets in even smaller towns and imagines pulling him out onto the dance floor and swaying with him for hours, kissing his husband over and over and over again.

Derek can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be married to Stiles, and he has absolutely no clue what to do about it.


	15. Walk-Off

“Come on come on come on,” Stiles pleads, hands pressed together prayerfully, widening his eyes in the wild hopes it will help him plead his case. “I’m the best choice you’ve got, come on.”

There’s a tense moment where Stiles thinks he’s about to get kicked out of the dugout and back into the bullpen—Finstock has been very happy about his tendency to stick out there during home games, although admittedly he has no clue it’s only because Stiles gets to flirt relentlessly with Derek when he does—but Finstock just throws up a hand and waves him towards the field, swearing on Babe Ruth’s grave that Stiles will regret being born if he manages to hurt himself. 

Stiles takes off for the on-deck circle before Finstock can change his mind, and hopes like hell that his dad is watching. He’s never pinch-hit before, but it’s been a brutal game for them: their entire outfield got hit with food poisoning shortly after they got to the stadium and were promptly brought back to the hotel, Ethan fell over the infield wall chasing down a pop-fly and jammed his hand into a seat back so hard that he couldn’t get it back into his glove without significant pain, and Scott had gotten hit in the head with a bat when Hamilton had gone chasing on an 0-2 count and lost his balance. In short, Finstock was hard pressed to find someone else to hit without calling them out of the bullpen.

He’s never been the winning run of a game. Never—Stiles had been shuffled into pitching at eight years old when he picked up a ball with his left hand to chuck it at Jackson’s head and hit him right in the forehead. He’d been a skinny kid, no power behind the plate until his senior year in high school, but he was throwing 92mph with regularity and no one cared about his .195 batting average when they had Jackson and Scott on the team. It hadn’t been until college that he’d worked tirelessly on hitting, spending Saturday nights at the batting cages with Allison and Jackson, hitting pitches off Isaac to work on timing in a way he never could with a machine. Stiles is proud of his swing, knows perfectly well that he’s the second best hitting pitcher in the National League—possibly tops the charts now that Ohtani blew his arm out—but he’s never crossed the plate as the game-winning run, and he’s been dying for it. He’s hit the game winner three times before, but there’s always been someone on base that hit the plate before him. 

Everything calms in him when he picks up the bat and stands in the on-deck circle. It’s a welcome weight, an extension of himself, as known to him as his own hands. He brings it up and taps it on his shoulder, crouches and swings; he’s been watching Adams all night, timing him and arguing with Scott about the right approach, and he counts it out in his head now. 

Aiden tries to lay out a bunt at the plate but his bat’s too low and the ball ricochets right at Stiles; he hits the ground, dropping the bat and trying to get as low as he can, hoping like hell the ball doesn’t come off the backstop and at him again. Scott’s at his side a moment later, helping him up and brushing him off, and when Stiles reaches to tap his chest in thanks his eyes slide over the top of the dugout and settle on a very familiar face. 

“Derek?” he says, somewhat stupidly, and Scott peers at him in concern. 

“Did it hit your head? I’m Scott, buddy, hold up—”

Stiles groans. Jesus, his best friend is a moron. A well-meaning, lovable moron. “No, you dumbass,” he says, gesturing to the seats, where Derek is leaning forward, Allison at his side. When those two became best friends Stiles isn’t sure, but they look like a magazine advertisement together and he’s only too happy to appreciate it. “Derek. And Amazing Allison. They’re right there.” There’s a swooping feeling in his stomach when he makes eye contact with Derek, and he feels himself starting to smile dopily before Finstock yells Scott’s name and he startles back to reality as Scott jogs back to the dugout. He shakes his head and twirls the bat around, swings again, imagining the pitch. 

Aiden strikes out, but the second Stiles steps forward the sign comes to pull Adams and he groans. The pitch count had been high for the 7th and he had been hoping for an easier pitch, a curveball that Adams couldn’t quite control or a fastball that was a hair too slow. Instead, he gets Ian Kennedy jogging across the outfield, and he’s back in the on-deck circle until he’s tossed a few warm-up pitches. On a whim, he turns and points his bat up at Allison with a wink, even though it’s not a home game, grinning when she blows him a kiss in return and he hears Finstock yelling at him to go fucking hit from his spot on the stairs. 

He takes the first pitch, a slider low in the dirt, to start the at-bat. The second pitch is also a slider, barely painting the corner of the plate; he lays off that too, watches the count go 2-0, and knows with absolute certainty that a fastball is coming. You don’t spend your whole life hanging out with a catcher without learning how they think, so when Kennedy winds up for the next pitch, Stiles swings with everything he has. 

He can tell the ball is getting distance by the way the bat reverberates in his hand when it connects, knows by the way Gallagher stands up behind him that it’s gone, a towering moonshot that’s being lost in the lights as Stiles stands there watching it. The left fielder barely moves, jogs backwards a few steps while he watches it, and Stiles starts moving—drops the bat at the plate and runs around the diamond, grinning when he rounds third and there’s a handful of his teammates waiting to jump on him. He’s surrounded by excitement and sweat, Jackson’s arms around his waist lifting him up while Scott leaps at him, crashing them down into a tangle at the plate. It’s the go-ahead run but his team is acting like he’s won them a place in the playoffs, and Stiles savors every second of it. 

He points up at Allison on his way into the dugout and yells, “you’re coming to every away game now!” before he jumps onto Scott’s back and demands he carry him to the Gatorade station.

Liam strikes out the side in the last inning, and Finstock is so pleased that he gives the entire pitching squad apart from Isaac a show-and-go for the next game.

“This is a lot nicer than the last time we woke up together on the road,” Stiles says, tracing his fingers absently on Derek’s bare stomach, running a thumb along the rim of Derek’s belly button before dipping his thumb in.

“Last time we were hung over on the floor and you were using my thigh on the pillow,” Derek says, amused. “That’s not a high bar to clear, Stiles.” Stiles hums against his shoulder as Derek’s fingers scratch into his hair; he resists the urge to push back against it like a cat, but it’s a struggle. “Love you,” he murmurs, brushing his lips across Stiles’ temple, and Stiles swears his heart rate skyrockets. “Can I take you to breakfast?”

Stiles breaks. “You can take me anywhere you like, as long as you tell me what’s going on,” he says, pushing himself out of Derek’s space and sitting up against the headboard. “I am well aware that this is the weirdest thing to be concerned about ever and that I am probably ruining whatever you’ve got going on here but it’s been thirty-eight days and the suspense is killing me, so please, just—tell me.”

Derek sits up next to him, confused hurt written all over his face and Stiles leans in and kisses him, parts his lips and sucks Derek’s bottom lip into his mouth gently, slides his hand along his firm jawline in the way he knows Derek likes to melt into. “You never said you loved me before we were in Vermont,” he explains; his lips brush against Derek’s when he speaks, keeping his voice low. Derek makes a small sound and he hurries on, “I’m not—it’s not a judgement, Derek,” he says, kissing him softly before pulling back to see his face. “Surprisingly, it never bothered me—I didn’t lie to you. You make me feel loved, you’ve always made me feel like that, and I can’t fucking tell you how much it meant to me that you wrote it down because in the back of my mind I thought you know, if we’re in a fight or something, if he gets busy or distant, I can look at that and remember.”

“Stiles—”

“No, wait,” he says, shaking his head, grabbing for Derek’s hand and pulling it into his lap. “This is important for me to say, okay? I haven’t had to look at it at all—I mean I have because seriously dude, that was fucking A+ romantic shit right there—even when you were busy, even after that one night, because I didn’t need it. I don’t need a reminder that you love me, you just—do. All the time. It’s just something I know, like—Scott’s always gonna forgive me if I say something shitty to him, Jackson’s the first person to get in a fight on my behalf and will insult me while doing it, and Derek loves me. It’s just a fundamental truth.”

“I thought you might like hearing it,” Derek says quietly when he takes a breath, and Stiles squeezes his hand.

“I do, Derek,” he says. “But you wrote an entire page and a half in that letter about why _you_ didn’t like to say it, so for the first few days I thought maybe it was just because it was our first trip together and you were happy, but I’m starting to worry that you feel guilty about it? And I just wanted to let you know that you shouldn’t, I know, and I want you to be comfortable.” He blows out a breath when he finishes, heart pounding suddenly with apprehension. He twists towards Derek and wiggles until he’s free from the bedspread, swings a leg over him and straddles his thighs, winding his arms around Derek’s neck, clinging to him. He feels the overwhelming need to keep talking, to fill the silence with assurances and apologizes; he hardly realizes he’s whispering until Derek’s hand rubs up and down his back and he makes soft shushing noises in Stiles’ ear.

“You’re worrying for nothing,” Derek murmurs into his neck; his beard scratches softly against Stiles’ skin and he fails to hold back a shiver. “I don’t feel guilty, Stiles. I’ve just been trying.” There’s a pause and he adds, “Can I show you something?”

Stiles has to move in order for Derek to show him anything, which he is loath to do when he’s wrapped up so tightly in him, cradled against Derek’s chest like he’s something precious. “You’re making my inner dialog sappy,” he informs Derek, and begrudgingly extricates himself from Derek’s embrace. He falls back against the bed and stretches out as Derek gets up and rummages through his travel bag, coming up with a slim portfolio that he carries over to the bed, opens up, and frowns at before pulling out several sheets of paper and handing them to Stiles.

It’s a list of questions, one hundred forty-four of them, numbered in Derek’s neat handwriting, divided up into carefully labeled topics, exactly five blank lines below each question. He flips through the pages quickly, takes in a few of the section headings— _Finance_ and _Dealing with Conflict_ among several others—and looks back up at Derek, reaching for the papers he’s still holding.

“These are mine,” Derek says, shaking his head slightly. “My answers, I mean. Not all of them, I’m not done yet.”

“Okay,” Stiles says slowly. He skims the first page again, taking in _who will make the biggest decisions in the household_ and _would you put your children in public or private schools_ and lands on _how can I better communicate with you?_ He breathes out an exclamation of understanding and looks up at Derek. “You’ve been trying,” he says, brushing his finger across the words. “I appreciate it, Derek, I hope you know that. But—what’s the rest of this?”

The flush that creeps up Derek’s cheeks has no business being so attractive, and he looks like he’d rather be asked anything else, but he raises his chin—a little defiantly, Stiles thinks—and says, “You said when I asked you to marry me, it better not be in public.”

“Uh huh,” Stiles says, furrowing his brow. “And?”

Derek looks frustrated; he wants to reach out and soothe the wrinkle in his forehead away, debates crawling back into his lap and kissing the frown right off his face. “You said when, Stiles.”

“I—” oh fuck, he said when. Had he meant to say when? He actually doesn’t remember, only hardly remembers the conversation, too elated over the realization that he was officially living with Derek and apparently, that had caused all his stupidly romantic—and sex-based—thoughts to come spilling out of his mouth. “If?” he tries, cringing. “Look, ba—Derek—”

“When,” Derek says again, softly this time. “It’s when. But there are things I need to know—I looked up these questions, okay? I was going to try answering a few of them myself before I asked you but I’m almost done and I still haven’t figured out how to talk about it with you. I’m not great at talking.”

“It’s a good thing I speak fluent Derek,” he says, setting the papers down in his lap as his stomach growls. “Can I keep these?” He waits until Derek nods, then leans in and kisses him shortly. “Let’s go get breakfast while I think about this,” he says, and then, because he can’t help himself, he adds, “but—it’s when? Really?”

“It’s when,” Derek says again, reaching out and squeezing his ankle. “Come shower with me.”

He lets Derek go get the water started and stares down at the papers again, eyes racing over the page before he grabs his phone and starts at the top. 

**Stiles:** 1: i want at least two kids. i was technically an only child but i don’t remember a time where i didn’t have scotty or jackson around  
 **Stiles:** i just think maybe only children are lonely  
 **Stiles:** or at least i would have felt that way

He takes a picture of all the pages to save on his phone—Derek might want to try actually talking because he thinks it's what Stiles wants, but Stiles has always been just fine expressing himself over text and he knows it’ll be easier for Derek. Besides, most of his time on the road is a lot of hurry-up-and-wait—at least answering Derek’s questions will give him something to do.

**Stiles:** 4: what would i say if one of my kids was gay?   
**Stiles:** REALLY DEREK  
 **Stiles:** i’m getting concerned  
 **Derek:** I read an article about homeless LGBT youth who experience discrimination from their LGBT parents. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to leave it in.  
 **Stiles:** god  
 **Stiles:** i’d say sweep the damn floor, johnny, no one gave me a cookie for coming out  
 **Derek:** Stiles.  
 **Stiles:** i’d be glad they told me, okay? of course i’d support them.

**Derek:** 5: I’d be upset if our kids didn’t want to go to college. I know it’s not for everybody but I would hope they’d at least give it a try. Being educated is not a bad thing.  
 **Stiles:** but no fucking loser colleges okay  
 **Stiles:** they can be gay but i refuse to tell my neighbor “oh ella is at harvard and johnny is a gamecock”  
 **Derek:** I don’t like the name Johnny.  
 **Stiles:** isn’t that nice for you

**Stiles:** 23: i’m rich and happy right now so i feel like this question is irrelevant  
 **Stiles:** besides, you showed me all your investments and stuff, if you’re ever poor the fucking world is ending so i don’t think i need to worry about it one way or another

**Derek:** 29: I don’t have any debt, and I budget every month so I don’t think that’s a problem.  
 **Stiles:** right it’s the budget  
 **Stiles:** not that your bank account has about 29 zeros at the end  
 **Derek:** I still budget.  
 **Stiles:** i know  
 **Stiles:** god help me, you going over the spreadsheets was sexy  
 **Stiles:** i hate you so much sometimes

**Derek:** What do you want to do after you’re done playing baseball?  
 **Stiles:** i used to want to be a pitching coach  
 **Stiles:** but it lost its appeal when i met you  
 **Stiles:** i’ve been thinking i might be a good teacher, though, like pe?  
 **Stiles:** then we’d have all the same breaks and maybe if we taught at the same school we could coach the baseball team together

**Stiles:** hey derek? can i add a question?  
 **Derek:** Of course.  
 **Stiles:** if i get traded and leave ny … is that gonna be the end?  
 **Stiles:** because i’ll never see you  
 **Stiles:** so that’s it, right?

His phone rings almost immediately after he sends the question and he hits the button to decline it twice before he picks it up sniffling. 

“Did you?” Derek asks, his voice soft and urgent. Stiles can hear the television behind him, the same ESPN show he’s been watching playing in the background. “They’re talking about you?”

“I don’t know,” he says. He switches to speakerphone and rubs at his eyes, willing them to stop tearing up. He’s been on edge all day, since Aiden had blurted out the blockbuster trade rumor on the plane—a four team deal, details still being ironed out, but nearly complete. Stiles had almost thrown up when he heard the words “Mets pitcher” uttered, and an emergency pitching staff meeting at the hotel made it clear that no one had been told yet.

“Stiles,” Derek says quietly, and Stiles almost ends the call so he doesn’t have to hear Derek’s answer. It’s an awful schedule already, and playing anywhere else would mean that the only time he had with Derek was in the off-season. It’s not enough to continue a relationship—he doesn’t know why he’s asking. “Hey,” Derek says, and he makes a miserable noise of acknowledgement. “I’ll move with you. If I can, I mean. I work on a contract, too, so it might not be right away, but wherever you go— _if_ it’s you—I’ll follow.”


	16. August

Cora’s waiting in his living room when he gets home with Allison, sweat streaming down his face—for the first time since February, he’d actually agreed with Stiles’ assessment that she was a sadist, because he can think of no other reason for her insisting on a five mile run through the sweltering August heat after an already strenuous workout at the gym. He is the idiot who agreed, though, so he doesn’t think he can really place all the blame on her. 

He holds a hand up in greeting, breathing too heavily to say anything at all, and makes a mess of the kitchen floor when he ends up wearing more of the water from the bottle he takes out of the refrigerator than he drinks. He hands one to Allison when she pushes off the doorway and comes to rest near him, grabs another for himself and pulls his body up to sit on the counter before tossing a kitchen towel at his feet. He’ll clean up the mess later, when he’s more in control of his limbs.

“So, big brother,” Cora says, “who’s this? I thought I knew all your friends—did you buy a new one?”

“Ha. Ha,” he says, opening one eye to glare at her. “This is Allison McCall. What are you doing here?”

“Hi, I’m Cora,” she says, and Derek groans. “Is he holding you here against your will? I can help you get the police involved, if you want.”

“Pretty sure I’m the one holding him against his will,” Allison says, tilting her head up and winking at him before she brushes her lips across his cheek. “I’m going to go upstairs and get ready. It’s nice to meet you, Cora.”

Cora’s watching him with an incredulous look on her face and as soon as Allison’s footsteps fade up the stairs, she walks over and pokes him hard in the shoulder. “Okay, what was _that_? She kissed you and you didn’t flip out about someone being in your precious space.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “She’s a friend who’s sometimes affectionate,” he says. “I don’t have precious space. I never push you away, do I?”

“I’m your sister, that’s different,” Cora says, waving her hand. “I’m just surprised. It took you years to get comfortable with Erica being all up on you, I’ve never even heard of Allison.”

He loves Cora, he does, but she’s his most self-absorbed sister. Laura, ever overbearing and nosy, could probably tell Derek in a heartbeat how many times he had mentioned Allison in a conversation and exactly what the context was; Cora has apparently forgotten that he had told her just the night before that he was going to the gym with Allison in the morning. “That’s because you don’t listen,” he says. “I’ve talked about her before, she’s Stiles’ best friend’s wife.”

Cora’s face lights up at the mention of Stiles. “Speaking of your boy toy,” she says, following him as he slips off the counter and starts walking upstairs, “where is he? I think you’ll agree that I’ve been waiting very patiently to meet him.”

“Stadium,” Derek says. He stops at the top of the stairs and blocks her access, folding his arms over his chest and raising an eyebrow. “You can wait downstairs,” he says. “I need to shower, we’re going to the game. You can come if you want,” he adds, grinning, “but you have to wear a Mets shirt. House rule.”

“A—I do not have to do any such thing,” she says, turning her nose up in the air. “Just because Stiles plays for them doesn’t mean the whole family has to sink to cheering for pond scum.”

He steps back and walks into the bedroom, stripping his shirt off and dropping it into the laundry basket after using it to wipe his forehead off. “Jerseys and hats are in the closet,” he says, “shirts in the third drawer—grab something to wear while you’re snooping around.”

Stiles is dancing. Derek’s used to the sight; it’s one of Stiles’ favorite things to do out in the bullpen, often ending up on the center-field scoreboard, flawlessly executing the routine to _Bye, Bye, Bye_ in the 9th inning, or twerking (badly) against the chain link fence and falling all over himself laughing at what is undoubtedly the look of mortification on Derek’s face. But all of that occurs on the days he doesn’t start, days where he’s not so focused and serious—Derek’s never seen him goofing off two hours before a game like this.

Cora, naturally, is delighted.

“How _do_ you handle someone with a sense of humor?” she asks, leaning back against her seat and kicking her feet up onto the wall in front of them. Derek resists the urge to push them off and lecture her about other people’s property. Childishly, he hopes his parents are watching and lecture her on her bad manners later at the dinner he’s been bullied into bringing Stiles to.

His head is starting to feel a little light.

Stiles hasn’t noticed them yet, still flailing around on the third base line, laughing at something one of the Braves players says to him, clutching a hand to his heart like it’s about to beat out of his chest. He slows his movements down and repeats them a few times, and after a few minutes there’s a crowd of players around him, all doing the same ridiculous dance. Derek is so utterly head over heels for him that he finds it endearing, and the thought kind of makes him want to die. He peeks over at Cora, ready to defend Stiles and his many weird antics, but she’s just watching him with a small smile on her face and Derek feels himself relax.

“Aww there’s my baby,” Scott says from the dugout, and Cora looks at him with interest as he comes jogging up to the net and crouches down. “Hey, Derek. You guys brought a friend?”

“Cora Hale,” Cora says, and Derek rolls his eyes. 

“Scott McCall,” Derek says, looking pointedly at Allison, who’s holding up one finger while she talks quietly into her phone. “Very married.”

“Don’t be such a downer, Der,” Cora says, rolling her eyes. “You brought me to a place with a lot of pretty men, I’m going to appreciate them.”

Derek might have killed her if Scott hadn’t fucking beamed at her, apparently delighted by her lack of tact. “How do you feel about tall and blond?”

“Oh, I’m equal opportunity,” Cora assures him and Derek makes a mental note to never bring her anywhere with him again.

“In that case, you gotta meet Isaac,” Scott says. “Hey, I gotta go drag Stiles out to the bullpen for warm-up, but Jackson’s off-again with Lydia so if you guys see him like, try to cheer him up or something. I posted a throwback pic on Instagram that I thought would make him laugh, but it just made him grumpier for some reason. Anyway. Catch you guys in a bit, don’t let my girl work too hard.”

Allison ends her conversation just as he’s walking away and Derek expects her to call him back, but she just taps on her phone and laughs, holding up a picture for them to see. “God, they were so young,” she says, a nostalgic smile on her face. “Stiles bitched constantly about the snow, despite never being in Syracuse in the winter,” she says. “Jackson was—well, he was a raging dick, actually, overcompensating for his anxiety, he did it every time he moved up a level. I thought he and Stiles were actually going to get into a fist fight the day they signed their major league contracts. It always bothered him that Scott and Stiles got called up first, but even as rookies they were better together than with anyone else. I had to hear the team _soul bros_ so many times I wanted to stab them. And Scott—well. Scott hasn’t changed all that much,” she says.

“Soul bros,” Cora snorts, elbowing Derek. “You know I’m very pro you getting out there and being happy—even if it means you’re cheering for the Mets now—but I’m really having a difficult time imagining you with someone who does the Cupid Shuffle dance in front of all these people and uses the term ‘soul bros’ unironically.”

Stiles comes skidding over to them just as the Braves line-up is being announced, crouches down and impatiently shoves half his hand through the net to grab for Derek, eyes sparkling with mischief. “Hey babe,” he says, and turns a megawatt grin to Cora, “and babe’s sister. Where’d Allison go?”

“She complained about the guy behind us eating a hot dog for twenty minutes and just left to go get us some,” Derek says, reaching up and grabbing Stiles’ fingers to squeeze briefly before sitting back in his seat. “Cora, this is Stiles.”

“Delighted,” Cora says, wicked grin on her face, and Derek suddenly has visions of the two of them ganging up on him for the rest of his life. He probably shouldn’t hope that Stiles gets traded, but maybe moving somewhere much farther away from Chicago—say, Japan—wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“I gotta go but I’ve got a surprise for you guys today,” Stiles says, rocking back on the balls of his feet. “It’s fantastic. Amazing. I can’t believe I pulled something off on this grand of a scale without _anyone_ —well. It’ll take you a bit to get it but when you do? Totally my doing.” He jumps as his name is yelled, bouncing up and pointing at Derek. “Tell Allison!”

Stiles ends up giving himself away before anyone figures it out. Derek watches him strike out the side in the top half of the first inning, ignoring Cora and Allison’s conversation, and then joins in at the bottom. He only joins in when the Mets come up to bat, watching the game idly while Ethan and Aiden each take the plate but focusing more on Cora talking about how she’s considering moving back to New York.

“Must you,” he sighs, and Cora laughs. 

“You know between me and Lo, you’d rather have me,” she teases, and Derek can’t really argue with that.

Scott’s on-deck with Ethan at the plate, and as soon as Ethan singles to right, Scott turns around and blows a kiss at Allison, then stops and sighs when his walk-up music starts before shaking his head and pointing his bat menacingly at Stiles, hovering by the dugout stairs and cackling with glee.

“ _Tough Guy_ , really?” Scotts yells, and Stiles laughs so hard he’s bent double. 

He takes Scott’s place in the on-deck circle, but not before pausing in front of them and saying, “I changed _everyone’s_. Wait until you hear Jackson’s. He’s gonna be so pissed. But mine is for you, baby.”

_I Knew You Were Trouble_ starts up after Scott’s standing on second base, and Stiles points his bat at Derek and winks. “Isn’t this a break-up song?” he asks, and Allison laughs at him.

“I’m sure that wasn’t the intention behind the choice,” Allison says. “Lydia used to say you were trouble, and Stiles would just sigh all dreamily and say you were the best kind.”

Jackson walks out to _I’m Too Sexy_ , looking murderous.

“Derek, I’m so sorry,” Talia says; Derek can hardly hear her over the crowd, one hand pressed over his open ear in an attempt to block them out. “We’ll get together for dinner as soon as we’re back, you know I’ve been looking forward to meeting him. You and Cora should fly out tonight, I know you’ve got to be back for the school year soon.”

“Did Laura even say she wanted us there?” Derek asks. “Isn’t that going to be a lot for her?”

“I think she’d rather have you meet the baby now than at Christmas,” Talia says. “Text me your itinerary and please, apologize to Stiles for me. I really have to go, sweetheart, I need to make sure your dad is ready. I love you—by the ticket now, Derek.”

“Love you,” he says, and sighs when he hangs up. “Laura’s in labor,” he says to Cora. “Mom wants us to fly out there as soon as possible—like tonight, preferably.”

“Isn’t that nice for Mom,” Cora says, raising an eyebrow and getting out her phone. “Why do you sound so grumpy about it? You love babies. The baby is gonna love _you_ , they always do. It’s sickening. I’d like to be someone’s favorite, for once.”

Derek rolls his eyes but doesn’t answer until Cora elbows him hard in the side, because his reason for not wanting to go is selfish and a little stupid, especially because his older sister is _having a baby_ , and he hates that he has to admit to it. “Stiles has a day off tomorrow,” he says. “He hasn’t had one for three weeks, we were looking forward to it.”

“Need a little alone time, huh, Der? Or have you had too _much_ alone time, if you—”

“Your obsession with my sex life is creepy,” he says, frowning. “And no, there’s this pop-up drive-in that Stiles read about and had wanted to try, so I got us reservations. Allison, maybe you and Scott could go with him?”

“Derek,” Cora cuts in, “you’re almost thirty years old, you don’t have to drop everything and run to London just because Mom tells you to. Besides, I can’t go until Tuesday, and—” she holds her phone out, text thread to Laura open—“Laura asked if we could please wait a week.”

“Why can’t you go until Tuesday?” he asks, relieved that he doesn’t have to cancel their plans but still slightly guilty that he’s putting his family off for Stiles.

“Job interview,” Cora says. “I told you, I think I’m moving back.”

“Curly fries,” Stiles moans, looking like he’s torn between shoving a handful in his mouth immediately and kissing Derek for all he’s worth. “Derek Hale, you _do_ love me.”

“Of course I love you,” Derek says, rolling his eyes. “Two weeks ago you told me that was a fundamental truth.”

Stiles pops a fry in his mouth and leans over, pressing a quick kiss to Derek’s cheek. “I also told you that I know that by the things you do,” Stiles says, motioning to the dinner that Derek had ordered for him. “Case in point. I do have a question about this whole movie date, though,” he adds, sounding shifty, and Derek looks over at him. 

He raises an eyebrow when Stiles stays silent. “Which is?”

“We’re totally gonna climb in the backseat of this baby and make out, right?” Stiles says, giving him a look that Derek thinks is supposed to be a leer but just makes him look ridiculous. “You know I never got the making out in the backseat of a car opportunity in high school and college, so I’m _really_ hoping—”

“Shut up and eat your burger, Stiles,” he says, shaking his head with a grin. “You really thought I brought you here to watch _Pretty in Pink_?”

“Good man,” Stiles says. “Eat. Quickly. There’s making out to get to. If we don’t get ourselves kicked outta here in an hour, we’re doing something wrong.”

Derek’s more proud than embarrassed when they get asked to leave forty-five minutes later.

“I wanna ask you one of your questions,” Stiles says later that night—early morning. Derek’s not sure. They’re watching _The Last Jedi_ for the tenth time, and Derek had thought Stiles might have fallen asleep; he’d laid his head in Derek’s lap as soon as it started, making quiet little sounds as Derek ran a hand through his hair, but he’s been silent for half an hour and that usually means he’s no longer awake. 

Derek frowns. There's only been one question from his list so far that they’d talked about over the phone, and Stiles had sent him a text an hour prior and asked if he could call about it. “Okay,” he says slowly, trying not to worry even though his stomach feels like it’s in knots all the sudden. 

“Am I pressuring you?”

“That’s not on the list,” he says, because he’s read the questions so often in the last seven weeks that he’s memorized them. 

Stiles lets out a sleepy huff of laughter. “No, I mean—talking about it. I can wait, if you want me to text it instead. I can wait until you’re on the plane or something.”

“You can ask,” he says. Stiles is quiet, lit up by the glow of the television as Derek watches shit expression shift, running a thumb over his bottom lip in lieu of kissing him. 

“Realistically, I’m not going to play for the Mets my whole career,” Stiles says slowly. “I hate thinking about it, but—I’ll be traded, or they won’t want to re-sign me, and I’ll have to play somewhere else … probably without Scott. And Jackson. This sounds so fucking dumb, Derek, I know, but—fuck, nevermind. Just forget it. Let’s turn this off and go to bed.”

He thinks about arguing with him, but reaches for the remote and clicks the television off, grabs Stiles’ hand and follows him upstairs and into bed before pulling him close. “Even if it’s dumb, I want to know,” he says, stroking a hand down Stiles’ bare back. “You’re worried about something—you can text it to me, if you want,” he offers, even though that form of communication has always been for his benefit.

“Forget about it,” Stiles says. His hand slides down Derek’s front, fingers making slow curves against his skin. “I want you to fuck me.”

“I want you to tell me what’s bothering you first,” he says, putting his hand over Stiles’ and stopping him. Stiles leaves in the morning for a week-long west coast swing, and Derek will be in London when he gets back, and he knows he’ll spend the whole time obsessing if Stiles doesn’t tell him.

Stiles sighs and pushes himself up, leans over Derek with a hand on his chest to rummage in the nightstand drawer before dropping the bottle of lube on the bed and flipping around on his stomach. “What will you do if you fall out of love with me?” he asks. Derek wonders if he’s muffling his words in the pillow on purpose. “If I leave and you have to wait—it could be months before I see you—”

He runs two fingers down Stiles’ spine lightly, feels him shudder at the touch. He’s thought about this more often than he cares to admit, though usually from the other side, imagining the slow wreckage of their relationship as Stiles meets new people and wants him less. He hooks his fingers into Stiles’s waistband and pulls his boxers down, leans over and kisses his shoulder blades and up to the curve of his neck. “I’ll fall in love with you again,” he says, turning his head to whisper it into Stiles’ ear. “The same way I did this time, over a thousand texts and hundreds of questions. I’ll fly out to you every weekend if that’s what it takes, even if it only means seeing you for five or six hours, or sleeping next to you for a night.”

“I don’t think there’s a category for that in your budget,” Stiles says a moment later, sounding breathless.

“I think the twenty-nine zeros could take the hit,” Derek says, laughing. “You’re worth it.”


	17. September

Derek hasn’t seen Stiles in two weeks. Well—he’s seen him in the most literal sense, whenever he gets the chance to turn on the Mets game during the away series, and sacked out in their bed during the home games, sleeping so peacefully that he doesn’t wake at all as Derek gets ready and kisses him goodbye—which might just inspire a lot of _feelings_ about Stiles being so familiar with Derek and occupying shared space that Derek can’t yet put into words but feels behind his chest like a comforting embrace. 

But really, he hasn’t seen Stiles in two weeks. It’s not just because of Stiles’ schedule; school has started, and Derek hadn’t done as much prep work over the summer as he used to do which meant he started out behind and stayed there, feeling like he was drowning. He’d made it to exactly one game, grading unit pre-tests the entire time, then had given up and resorted to burying himself in work instead of taking up Stiles’ offer of coming by the clubhouse for dinner during the home series. “It’s the end of the season and we’re out of contention,” Stiles had said in the voicemail he had left, “no one will care.”

This year, Derek’s prep is at the end of the day, just as Stiles is getting to the stadium. His lunch is obscenely early, while Stiles is still sleeping. They’ve gone for two weeks on rushed phone calls during the weekend and text messages that are sent and received hours apart. 

Derek’s ready to rip something apart with his bare hands.

He feels, sometimes, like it’s two steps forward and one step back for him no matter what he tries to do, no matter what _Stiles_ tries to do. They’re still slowly going through Derek’s list of questions, thankfully aligned on most big issues and able to joke and debate about what they don’t agree on. Derek can tell Stiles he loves him now without the taste of ash in his mouth, without apprehension or uncertainty; he can pull him into his lap and rub his face against his neck and whisper that he just needs to touch him, kiss him, hold him. He can, apparently, have whispered phone sex in his sister’s bathroom, words he doesn’t even remember spilling from his lips as Stiles urges him on—but he can’t manage to ask when Stiles is leaving for California without making it seem like an accusation.

He hadn’t even remembered, is the thing. The entire summer had gone by with Derek counting down the days until October 1, looking forward to having Stiles meet him at the gate of the school—maybe his classroom, this year—when the bell rang and taking slow, meandering walks home and around the city, driving out of town with him on the weekends and spending no-school days lounging around in bed until the need for food drove them out. He imagined Halloween in the city, bundled up in blankets on the porch so they could greet the trick-or-treaters who came in floods, thought about signing them up for the cooking class that Stiles had seen a flyer for in the bookstore, wondered if Stiles would want to spend a day shadowing Brett, the P.E. teacher at the school. So when Stiles had wandered in the door talking to Scott two weeks ago and said, “dude, California is gonna be so awesome this year,” Derek’s heart had dropped.

**Stiles:** 12: our parents can take the kids any time they want them  
**Stiles:** in fact i think they should spend christmas break with grandma and grandpa and we can go on vacation  
**Derek:** Would you really want to spend Christmas away from our kids? Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re joking.  
**Stiles:** depends, how long has it been since we’ve had sex in this scenario  
**Stiles:** we are not gonna be those people d  
**Derek:** Can you just answer the question, please.  
**Stiles:** no, probably not  
**Stiles:** but new years? can we shove them off on someone else for that?  
**Derek:** Sure.  
**Derek:** And it wouldn’t be that long. We’re not going to be those people.  
**Stiles:** i knew it, you can’t get enough of this

**Derek:** 46: I feel selfish for this, but I think I would be hurt if you wanted to go on a trip without me.  
**Derek:** I wouldn’t tell you no. You can make your own decisions, of course.  
**Stiles:** does your answer change if i’m not playing anymore  
**Derek:** I’m not sure.  
**Derek:** I’m sorry.  
**Stiles:** what about a group vacation but we spend the days apart doing different things?  
**Stiles:** you and allison can hang out doing all your sweaty sporty things  
**Stiles:** scotty and i can lay around the pool drinking and stuffing our faces  
**Derek:** I think I would be fine with that.  
**Derek:** What if I wanted to hang out with Scott?  
**Stiles:** then you better be ready to bail allison and i outta jail  
**Stiles:** did i ever tell you about my criminal record?  
**Stiles:** we got arrested for trespassing  
**Stiles:** we were playing capture the flag and broke into an abandoned store downtown  
**Derek:** What did your dad say?  
**Stiles:** lectured us a bunch  
**Stiles:** threw us in jail for the night after the second time  
**Derek:** The second time? Stiles.

“Derek Hale,” Stiles gasps out, flinging himself through the front door like he’s being chased, “are you ready to propose to me?”

Derek drops the wooden spoon back into the pot with the tomato sauce and frowns. “No?” he says, because he thought Stiles had realized that all those questions meant that though Derek did want to marry him, he still had a lot of work to do before he was ready. 

Stiles’ eyes get a fraction wider before he starts laughing, shedding the obnoxious orange puffy vest he’d insisted on buying the second the weather dipped into the lower 60s. “Okay,” he says, tossing it onto the entryway bench while Derek raises an eyebrow, “not like, literally right this second, it was a figure of speech. How about this: Derek Hale, are you ready to have your fucking mind blown?” Derek tilts his head back as Stiles comes up from behind him and wraps his arms around Derek’s torso, kissing the back of his neck lightly. “Actually, you want me to—no, actually, no time. Turn this stuff off, we gotta go.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the stadium?” Derek asks, reaching out and turning the burner off. 

“Yeah, in twenty minutes, but clearly I’m going to be late. Scotty called with some news just as I was getting to the station so I turned around and ran back because _someone_ didn’t answer their phone. Come on, come on, go get your sneakers on.”

He makes Stiles wait until he’s got the kitchen put back together—he can try to hurry Derek out the door all he wants, but that doesn’t mean Derek is going to leave raw meat out on the counter. Stiles flies upstairs and comes back with his backpack considerably more full, holding Derek’s phone in his hand, then chatters non-stop while he orders an Uber and waves Derek out the door.

Derek’s left plenty of games with Stiles, but has never made this trip in reverse, waving to the employee guarding the door to the underground concourse, watching a steady stream of people walking around getting ready for game day. He’s come when the gates open but never this early, a full seven hours before the game is due to start. He hopes Stiles has thought to shove a book into his backpack, because Derek doubts his phone can keep him occupied for that long.

“Come on, you can change with me,” Stiles says, pulling him into the empty clubhouse when Derek hesitates at the door. “You’ll probably be one of the only ones out on the field with us, really, usually they stay to the sides—well, Allison will be with you and I figured you’d probably have more fun with her and Scott, anyway. Jackson said you could go with him, too, if you wanted, Lydia says the grass is hell on her heels and refuses to come. I think everyone else has someone, but—”

“Stiles,” he interrupts, frowning in confusion as Stiles throws items of clothing at him from his backpack, all the things he usually wears working out with Allison. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, straightening up and giving him a sheepish look. “Uh, it’s family day. I forgot about it, I’ve never brought someone. Allison spent half her time with me last year because she’s awesome but—it’s always on the last homestand. We can bring our families to workout and batting practice, have dinner and everything before the game.” He grabs a royal blue practice jersey from his locker and holds it out. “I had this made for you a few weeks ago and kept forgetting to bring it home but, uh, it’s an official team jersey. Like, illegally so, I promised Martin I’d visit his grandkid’s school if he made one for you.”

Derek’s name is pressed onto the back and he rubs a thumb over the vinyl of the number 24, head spinning as he starts to strip off his clothes and pull on what Stiles had brought for him. “You don’t think I’ll be in the way? On the field?”

“Nah babe, it’ll be great,” Stiles says, yanking his shirt over his head and stumbling over his pants. He’s got his back to Derek, taking longer to change than necessary in his haste to be done faster, fumbling and missing the armholes of his jersey completely. “I’ve seen you hit, they’ll adjust the machine for you—I’ll see if I can get someone to take a video, wouldn’t your family get a kick—” he stops talking when he turns around, lips parted, hat in his hand halfway out to Derek.

Derek frowns. “What?”

“I’m gonna get fired,” Stiles breathes out, and pushes Derek up against the locker before kissing him. “Holy shit, this should be your job, look at you in this—Jesus Christ—”

There is a tiny voice in the back of his mind that tells him he should push Stiles away, but he can’t deny that this scenario has been a fantasy of his for awhile now, and it’s started out like this so often in his imagination that he can’t help but curl his hands around Stiles’ hips and yank him close, tilting his head and parting his lips so Stiles can lick into his mouth, moaning. 

“You’re late, Stilinski,” Jackson yells from the door, and Stiles swears a blue streak and jumps back, leaving Derek pressed against the locker, chest heaving.

“Fuck you, that was about to be the best sex of my life,” he yells back, cheeks flushing even redder. “Shit. I’m sneaking you back in here at some point, Derek, this is happening. God, you look amazing. Put this on—” he shoves the hat on Derek’s head a steps back, a small whine tearing from the back of his throat. “We could fund every school in the goddamn country if we sold a calendar full of this,” he says, waving a hand at Derek and grabbing his phone. “Don’t move.”

“Stiles—”

By the time they get out to the field, Stiles’ ‘just one, just for me’ has turned into about twenty pictures in various locations and poses and Derek is starting to wonder if he’ll even have time to bat before the game starts. Finstock gives Stiles a look that promises he’ll get his punishment for being late, and Stiles drags Derek along to start the workout with a run around the warning track. 

An hour later, he’s incredibly glad that he’d stuck to training with Allison. He’s pleasantly sore by the time Stiles squeezes his arm and heads off to the bullpen with a promise to be back on the field before Derek has his turn at bat. He spends the next hour with Jackson, fielding grounders as Jackson gives him pointers, shifts to shagging pop-ups in the middle infield, squinting into the late afternoon sun. Finally, Stiles jogs out of the bullpen and yanks him towards the plate, deep into an argument with Scott over whether or not a jersey redesign should feature Mr. Met (Derek’s vote, which he is told he is not allowed, is no; Scott high fives him while Stiles looks on in outrage). 

Batting practice on a major league field is incredible. He knows that the machine is turned much lower than it is for everyone else, but there’s still a sense of pride that fills his chest when he hits a ball that lines past Jackson, or that goes deep enough that Danny has to jog backwards to catch it. But it’s nothing compared to when a whistle blows and everyone starts making their way back to the dugout, ready for dinner, and Stiles grabs his wrist and holds him back, pulls him over to the on-deck circle while Jackson and Danny head back to the field and Scott pulls on his gear.

“I know your birthday isn’t for another month,” Stiles says, grinning softly and rubbing his thumb along Derek’s pulse point, “but happy early birthday. You told me before you knew about all this that you wanted to play for the Yankees when you were a kid and—well, I hope being a Met for a few at-bats is good enough.” He turns around and holds his hand over his head, twirling his wrist as he jogs out to the plate, and Derek’s head snaps up as he hears the chorus of _I Believe in a Thing Called Love_ start to play.

“Now batting,” a disembodied voice from the PA system announces, “number twenty-four, Derek Hale.”

He thinks he might pass out. Scott laughs as he walks up to the plate in a daze, stands up and pulls him back another few inches. “Don’t crowd, Stiles doesn’t have the greatest control the day after a start,” Scott says, and Derek turns his head to see Stiles grinning at him from the mound.

“Does he seriously think I can hit anything he throws?” he asks incredulously. He’d like to think so, but he’s seen Stiles reach over a hundred on the radar, and the fastest pitch he’s ever swung at was fifty-five. 

“Give it a try,” Scott says, pulling his mask down and crouching behind the plate. “You want a fastball? Curve?”

“Something easy,” Derek says, well aware that some of their teammates have stayed behind to watch, and the visitor’s dugout has a few interested players leaning against the rail. He catches Allison near the on-deck circle with her phone out, an indulgent smile on her face and he shakes his head to clear it, gets into his stance, and waits. The pitch comes so fast that Derek hardly sees it leave Stiles’ hand before it’s smacking against Scott’s glove.

“When he comes out of the stretch, count one and swing,” Scott says, throwing the ball back from his knees. “And _throw straight you moron_.”

“You think you’re so great you get out here and pitch,” Stiles yells back, but he laughs as he resets himself. 

Derek misses the next two pitches, but finally connects on the third, a pop-fly on the third base line that makes Scott whoop with glee. “Just a little too early,” Scott says, and yells at Stiles to go through the pitching motions slowly. “See where his arm starts to come back down? Start your count from there. Good pitch, buddy!” he adds, and even from sixty feet away Derek can see Stiles roll his eyes. 

He wiggles his shoulders to try and lessen the tension, digs in, and tries to pay more attention to Stiles’ arm. This time when he swings, he feels the bat nearly shake out of his hands when it connects, a loud crack as he follows through, the ball lined to third as Jackson puts on an impressive burst of speed to reach it, but it gets past him and rolls out to the outfield, and twenty feet shy of the warning track. 

Derek’s got his arms full of Scott a moment later, being hugged against his bulky gear, and he feels his cheeks flush with pride when Scott exclaims, “sweet, bro! That hit at least ninety-five!”

“Quit the love fest and fucking catch, Scotty,” Stiles yells from the mound. “We’ve only got five more minutes!”

**Stiles:** 82: i don’t care if you want your parents to live with us, we could just buy a bigger house  
**Derek:** They won’t want to, don’t worry. Do you think your Dad would?  
**Stiles:** probably not but i might have to make him one day  
**Stiles:** you’d really be cool with that?  
**Derek:** He’s your family, of course I’d be okay with that.  
**Stiles:** he’s be your family too  
**Derek:** All the more reason

**Derek:** 74: I’ve been afraid to answer this one because I know you eventually want to live in Beacon Hills again, but I don’t want to leave Brooklyn.  
**Derek:** I said I would move if you got traded or signed somewhere else and I meant that, but I’d want to come back here after you were done. Is that something you can live with?  
**Stiles:** could you spend some time in bh first?  
**Stiles:** to see if maybe you change your mind  
**Stiles:** like maybe we could agree to two years and if you still want to move back we can  
**Derek:** I could do that, but are you sure you could?  
**Stiles:** i wanna say yes  
**Stiles:** maybe this is just one of those things we have to wait and see  
**Stiles:** maybe i just need some time to think about raising kids in ny instead of bh

Two days later, Derek wakes up to the smell of burning food and the smoke detector screaming at him from the kitchen as Stiles thunders down the stairs, alternating cursing under his breath with yelling reassurances that he’s got everything under control. Derek had been looking forward to sleeping in with Stiles tucked up next to him for the first Sunday in months, but he drags himself out of bed and stretches before wandering downstairs, listening to pans being banged around frantically.

“The season’s been over for twelve hours and you’re already bored enough to burn the kitchen down?” he says coming into the room and scanning the mess.

Stiles whips around and narrows his eyes. “No trying to distract me with all that,” he says, waving a hand in Derek’s direction. “I’m trying to do something nice for you.”

Derek ignores him as he walks over, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist and nosing at the back of his neck. “By making me buy new pans later?”

There’s a short pause and then Stiles deflates, sinking back against him. “I’ll clean it up and take you to breakfast?”

He lets his hand drift down Stiles stomach, slipping under his shirt to press against his warm skin, scratching his beard against Stiles’ cheek just to hear the small moan slip out. “Or we could leave it for later and go back to bed,” he says. “Or to the couch, or the table. Whatever you want.”

“Oh man,” Stiles breathes out, “this offseason is gonna be so great,” and just like that, Derek’s mood crashes. 

**Derek:** When are you going back to California?

He stares at his phone screen, willing the text to send itself. Stiles making popcorn in the kitchen (he couldn’t possibly manage to set fire to the microwave, he’d sworn up and down, and Derek had rolled his eyes but is still keeping an ear out for any unusual sounds) for their movie night and Derek is supposed to be finding a movie for them to watch, but has instead typed some version of that question into his message thread with Stiles seven times without actually sending it.

“Derek,” Stiles calls, “you want salt?”

He takes a deep breath and hits send. “Yeah, salt is great,” he says, and clicks randomly at whatever movie is next up in the Netflix queue. 

“I’m right here you dork, you didn’t need to text that,” Stiles says, laughing, dropping onto the couch next to him. “I told you it wouldn’t take that long to make popcorn. Oh sweet, Scotty said this was funny.” He crams a handful of popcorn into his mouth and chews madly before flicking the piece that fell onto his shirt at Derek.

It figures that the one time he’s actually feeling sick about asking Stiles a question, Stiles takes his time to answer. Derek reaches for the bowl just to give himself something to do, focuses on the picture of him and Stiles out at the bar for Erica’s birthday that’s sitting on one of the shelves that line the wall. “Did you book a flight yet?”

“No dude, I wanted to ask you first. I was thinking maybe a red-eye on the 20th? If that doesn’t give you enough time though—”

“It’s more than I thought I’d get,” he says, which is a relief even though his stomach is sinking. The 20th is three weeks away; Derek usually takes two days off around Thanksgiving and he was hoping to save a few days to use during the next season, but maybe he could take a day off before Stiles left—

Stiles twists his head around and looks up at him from where he had slumped down to rest his head on Derek’s chest, one eye squinting. “Huh? What’d you think, that I’d drag you to the airport as soon as school was out?”

“I didn’t really think you’d take me into consideration,” he says honestly.

“You … didn’t think I’d take you into consideration when it’s your schedule I’m trying to work around?” Stiles asks, sounding as confused as Derek feels. “If the 20th is too early, you can tell me, but I don’t think we should leave later than the 22nd. There’s a lot of traditions and shit I gotta do before Christmas—”

“Christmas?”

“Yeah—Derek, are we talking about the same thing?” Stiles asks, sitting up and twisting around fully to look at him. The movie continues behind him as Stiles watches him with a confused expression, hands finding a place to rest on Derek’s thigh. For a moment Derek looks at him and his heart beats painfully in his chest, still overwhelmed with the idea that Stiles is _his_ , and he leans forward and kisses him briefly. “You still wanted to come for Christmas, didn’t you?”

Derek is _counting down the days_ until Christmas, not that Stiles needs to know that. 

“And I thought—” Stiles stops abruptly and blows out a breath, cheeks growing pink in the glowing light of the television. “Oh, fuck it, I thought maybe you’d want me to come for Thanksgiving? I know I made fun of the whole cabin-in-the-woods thing and honestly it might be against my contract to ski, who fucking knows, I’m a little bit of a disaster if I’m not on a baseball field but I figured I could just bring a stack of books or something but I totally get it if it’s still a Hale family thing, I can just go to my dad’s after all—”

“Stop,” he says, blinking. He likes Stiles’ rambling, but sometimes—“You want to go to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving?”

“Yes,” Stiles says, managing to look defiant, like he thinks Derek might not actually want him to go. 

“And you’re not going to California until Christmas?”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Stiles says, pushing his hands up Derek’s thighs and across his stomach, coming to rest on his chest. “I told my dad I’d see him at Christmas and he’s trying to get some time off to come out here. Why would I go any earlier? You don’t have the time off.”

“I thought you spent the off-season out there. I figured you’d be leaving soon,” Derek admits, shifting around when Stiles shakes his head with a small grin and pulls himself up to straddle Derek’s lap.

“Derek, you idiot,” Stiles says, leaning in and kissing him softly. He tastes like butter and the sharp, chemical aftertaste of soda as he slides his tongue into Derek’s mouth, hands coming up to wrap around Derek’s neck, one hand settling into his hair. “I’m not leaving you until I absolutely have to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can [reblog the tumblr post](https://elisela.tumblr.com/post/634802810391756800/ahead-in-the-count-e-50k-complete-for) if you want

**Author's Note:**

> come send me stuff @ [tumblr](http://elisela.tumblr.com).


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